I was at a fascinating workshop last week called, Innovation as a Biomimetic Process.
Don’t let the fancy name concern you. Basically, it was a session comparing corporate (and personal, for that matter) innovation to the evolutionary development of a species. Having never taken a biology class past high school, I found some of the evolutionary stuff fascinating. More than the actual science though, was the framing of how we look at the evolution of a species. Here was my quotable eyeopener:
“Everyone thinks species evolve. Species do not evolve. Genes evolve. The gene is one piece of a big system.”
Species don’t evolve. Genes evolve and, over time, combine to create new strains of species or new species altogether. This isn’t an altogether novel concept, but the framing of it was extremely interesting to me, particularly as “species” can be so easily interchanged with “companies”. Companies don’t evolve. Processes evolve. Products evolve. Systems evolve. And people drive all those things.
If you’re looking for change in your company, look to the smallest units and focus your change efforts there. Only in changing the parts can you change the whole.
