Darwinian insights on innovation and competition

Variation, selection and competition are the challenges of navigating today’s digital ecosystem of value. Identify the struggle between individuals and competitors to discover tomorrow’s game-changers. Innovation is the modern struggle for existence. Will your organization survive?

Consumers buy your products, services and interactions for reliability. Partners sought your alignment for greater stability. Employees joined your company for predictable results. Disruptive innovation can be identified when best practices no longer produce predictable results. Our modern knowledge-intensive economy depends on organizational capabilities. Is your organization having trouble identifying why the margin is eroding? Disruption in disguise may be the answer.

Struggle for existence

Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species is unquestionably one of the greatest works in human intellectual history. In this seminal book, Darwin develops the argument of why the theory of special selection is incorrect and why the theory of natural selection is more favorable. Eventually, reputable scientists arrived to acknowledge that evolution, the transformation of species over time, had in fact occurred. Darwin elaborated that variance is not an anomaly but rather an inevitable result of orchestrated processes. Causes of variability and the difficulty in distinguishing between varieties and species were not only challenges for Darwin. Today, a complex ecosystem of offerings makes the identification of value-based innovations difficult to delineate in markets with multiple offerings.

Buried under the struggle for existence, many innovators incorrectly assume that natural selection requires competition among individuals. Darwin defines this struggle not between individuals as competitors but in a metaphorical sense where predation, parasitism or environmental conditions dictate a new struggle. Natural selection eliminates competition. All modern innovation organizations should pay attention to lessons of selection in the struggle for existence — a modern struggle for variability through innovation and predictable results. Industries are looking less to their neighbors and more toward unrelated industries for innovation insights. You’re not competing with your business neighbor.

Natural selection redefining the rules

Industry leaders are searching to discover tomorrow’s game-changers. Will a new technology improve efficiency? Is the current business model changing? How do we compete tomorrow in this explosive sharing economy? There are multiple methods to ensure corporate survival. The accepted method favors players that evolve and adapt. The winners define new rules and establish new games.

This year will unlock opportunities — ones that were not afforded last year. The dawning of the new year also will bring challenges previously unseen. Start with these questions before you set your organizational agenda.

  1. Is your organization creating and capturing value?
  2. Does your organization not only find the right strategies but make good decisions when selecting future strategies?
  3. Is your organization in competition or cooperation? For example, is your organization building walls for the competition or establishing relationships with unlikely allies?
  4. Are you playing an old game, or are you redefining a new game?
  5. Has your organization clearly identified complimentors (the situation in which customers and suppliers play symmetric roles)?

Natural selection may preserve favorable variations and reject injurious variations. Like the natural selection of animals, all inferior businesses are not immediately destroyed; they evolve out of existence. Darwin suggested that natural selection is “the daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, [of] every variation, even the slightest, rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good.” Isn’t this happening in business — every hour of every day? The change we experience in business is natural selection. Consider the value your organization adds, as environmental conditions change. Is your organization evolving out of existence?

The evolution of disruption

Several mistletoe plants growing on the same branch of a host tree may struggle for existence. It might be truer that the struggle for existence is not against the thousands of seeds of the same kind, or against other fruit-bearing plants, but against any attempt to devour the seeds and thus prevent dissemination. Disruption is not an event; it’s evolution, a transformation of convenience. Aspects of your business are transforming as did cloud computing, consumerism and mobile — focus beyond the seeds of your company and observe the broader struggle for existence.

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Peter is a technology executive with over 20 years of experience, dedicated to driving innovation, digital transformation, leadership, and data in business. He helps organizations connect strategy to execution to maximize company performance. He has been recognized for Digital Innovation by CIO 100, MIT Sloan, Computerworld, and the Project Management Institute. As Managing Director at OROCA Innovations, Peter leads the CXO advisory services practice, driving digital strategies. Peter was honored as an MIT Sloan CIO Leadership Award Finalist in 2015 and is a regular contributor to CIO.com on innovation. Peter has led businesses through complex changes, including the adoption of data-first approaches for portfolio management, lean six sigma for operational excellence, departmental transformations, process improvements, maximizing team performance, designing new IT operating models, digitizing platforms, leading large-scale mission-critical technology deployments, product management, agile methodologies, and building high-performance teams. As Chief Information Officer, Peter was responsible for Connecticut’s Health Insurance Exchange’s (HIX) industry-leading digital platform transforming consumerism and retail-oriented services for the health insurance industry. Peter championed the Connecticut marketplace digital implementation with a transformational cloud-based SaaS platform and mobile application recognized as a 2014 PMI Project of the Year Award finalist, CIO 100, and awards for best digital services, API, and platform. He also received a lifetime achievement award for leadership and digital transformation, honored as a 2016 Computerworld Premier 100 IT Leader. Peter is the author of Learning Intelligence: Expand Thinking. Absorb Alternative. Unlock Possibilities (2017), which Marshall Goldsmith, author of the New York Times No. 1 bestseller Triggers, calls "a must-read for any leader wanting to compete in the innovation-powered landscape of today." Peter also authored The Power of Blockchain for Healthcare: How Blockchain Will Ignite The Future of Healthcare (2017), the first book to explore the vast opportunities for blockchain to transform the patient experience. Peter has a B.S. in C.I.S from Bentley University and an MBA from Quinnipiac University, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude. He earned his PMP® in 2001 and is a certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt, Masters in Business Relationship Management (MBRM) and Certified Scrum Master. As a Commercial Rated Aviation Pilot and Master Scuba Diver, Peter understands first hand, how to anticipate change and lead boldly.