Next year will mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's seminal work The Origin of Species which details the theory of evolution by natural selection and which continues to be heralded as one of the most powerful ideas in history so what better way to kick off a blog that will following the thoughts and ideas that will hopefully evolve into a successful business than to consider evolutionary theory and its application to the generation of business ideas.
In our first lecture Hans Landström compared defining entrepreneurship to trying to define the Heffalump from Winnie the Pooh
"...a rather large and important animal. He has been hunted by many individuals using various trapping devices, but no one so far has succeeded in capturing him. All who claim to have caught sight of him report that he is enormous, but disagree on his particulars."
To me the Heffalump represents the entrepreneurs idea, an organism which in the entrepreneurs mind is 'a rather large and important animal' but in reality is more like a tiny fish at the bottom of the food chain, whose species is on the brink of extinction. The survival of this Heffalump and the fulfiment of its evolutionary potential to become the 'large and important' animal it should be depends not on the survival of any one single trait that the Heffalump possesses but on the survival of the Heffalum as a species, the entrepreneur must be able to recognise mutations of the Heffalump that give it a competive advantage in the market place and avoid those that make it susceptible to predators. Sexual selection will also play a vital role, the Heffalump should preferentially mate with other Heffalumps that have desirable traits - mates with money, power, skills and influence will all play an important role along the evolutionary timeline...
Interestingly (if you are kind of a biology/tech nerd and let's face it, if you are still reading this post you must be....) a new game called Spore in which you create an organism and guide it along a treacherous evolutionary path in order to reach its greatest potential is being released by Electronic Arts this week. The game's has been tested and praised by evolutionary biologists at Yale University although with the proviso that it greatly simplifies the evolutionary process (see the New York Times Article). Whether the game accurately represents evolution or not, it certainly represents an entrepreneurial use of Darwin's work, most probably one that will sell many more copies than Darwin's original book!
The creature creation software, which allows anyone to create their Heffalump with limitless variations is available as a free download from the Electronic Arts website, a move which was praised on the excellent Wikinomics Blog here. The blog will follow the creation of my own Heffalump; will it be successful? Stay tuned....
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