Standardized Liability

            Business people often like to compare themselves to large carnivorous animals. This is meant to give an impression of strength and power. However, they never seem to notice that the vicious animals that they compare themselves with are either endangered or hunted for sport.

            In nature the most successful animals are scavengers. This can be seen in any populated area that has been overrun by squirrels, rats, raccoons, and mice. The larger and more complex an area becomes the better the scavengers seem to do.

            The reason for this is adaptation. The carnivores that seem so impressive are adapted to live in a standardized and stable environment with a set amount of resources upon which to draw. Whenever there is a change in that environment, or the nature of the resources, the carnivores die out almost instantly.

            Scavengers are forced, by their very nature, to constantly adapt to changing resources and environments. Since they never know what they will have to work with they require intelligence, versatility, and creativity in order to constantly find uses for whatever they have available to work with. Because of this the things that kill off the large predators rarely affect them.

            This analogy is particularly relevant to the production industry in the modern era of economic and technological change. With fiscal resources at an absolute minimum, and a technological environment that is drastically different than anything seen before, it is incredibly easy to see the correlation between large businesses and large predators. Neither is able to adapt easily to a change in resources or environment.

            This also means that smaller ventures that are willing to try radically new approaches in order to adapt to the changing business environment have an enormous edge resulting from their willingness to act like scavengers in order to obtain resources and their creative adaptability in finding new uses for the available resources.

            This means that by the end of the decade we should see a radicle power shift in the production industry and the business community. The carnivores are all going to disappear. And, the long-term survivors will be those with the greatest ability to adapt, change, invent, and push the boundaries of what is considered standardized practice.