One of the great benefits of robust scientific theory is that it allows you to transfer lessons from one area to another. Our relatively recent understanding of the theory behind the adaptive immune system has allowed the development of therapies in several disease areas, for example. Our explanation of how genes express themselves is revolutionising many fields of medicine. And the same idea-transfer benefits arise from using evolutionary theory to understand how business models evolve. As usual, allow me a short digression into the science on my way to some practical conclusions.

Recently, I was advising a company on how it might improve its strategy process and in particular its approach to market segmentation. Its current practice is pretty typical of the industry: it segments the market according to disease stage. I was encouraging it to adopt contextual segmentation. In this approach (see PME April 2012) the heterogeneity of patients, payers and professionals is combined to understand the market in terms of the different contexts in which the usage decision is made.

This is an approach I’ve taught many companies. It’s an adaptation to markets in which prescribing decisions reflect not only clinical needs but also non- clinical needs of all three stakeholders. My client company was struggling with it. The concept was understandable enough, it said, but the problem lay in its business information systems and processes, which were designed
to support traditional segmentation and did not allow contextual segmentation. As its Chief Marketing Officer put it: “You’re asking us to make a leap, and that doesn’t happen in evolution.” He had a point, of course; evolution is almost synonymous with gradualism. But, as often happens, his comment triggered a connection in my brain to evolutionary science. This issue – how does evolution apparently make sometimes quick, large changes – was something that Darwin himself addressed, but which was later explained by others, such as the Frenchman Lucien Cuènot.

What Cuènot and others realised is that when a significant evolutionary leap appears, it is often not as much of a leap as it first seems. Often, the trait in question is not a ‘de novo’ trait, springing out of nowhere; rather it is the minor adaptation of some prior
trait developed for some other purpose.

For example, feathers may seem to be a big leap needed for flight but, in fact, they appeared before flight as an adaptation to retain warmth and needed only a little adaptation to make them airworthy. Similarly, evolutionary psychologists think that humans’ calculation and grammar skills are merely small changes in cognitive abilities that evolved earlier for other purposes.
If you studied biology, you might have heard this process referred to as pre-adaptation, exaptation or co-option. Whatever the label, it’s a way of explaining how large changes appear to happen quickly.