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Have you ever wondered, while enjoying your Thanksgiving turkey, why the Pilgrims were the voyagers and Squanto the local expert, instead it being the other way around?

If so, read Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. It’s a remarkable book that attempts to develop a biogeographic theory of history. It’s well worth your time and mental energy, and not only because Diamond’s theory of why the last 13,000 years happened as they did holds valuable lessons for organizational design and business strategy.

But the lessons are there to be found. For example: Throughout history, many societies have voluntarily relinquished valuable technologies to their eventual detriment.

Take Japan. It once had more and better guns than any other country in the world, but by the time Commodore Perry arrived in 1853 they were gone. Guns had destabilized Japanese society, so they were banned. Their benefit — a more powerful military force– meant little to Japan’s Samurai rulers because of Japan’s isolation.

China once had a great fleet of oceangoing ships. But in 1433 A.D. a new faction took power and eliminated the fleet, probably to prevent potentially destabilizing contacts with other cultures. China’s political unity and isolation from the rest of the world meant the benefit of internal stability outweighed the cost.

European nations, in contrast, never unified, and engaged in a centuries-long competition that included development of military technology and expansion of trade. That both could destabilize their governments was outweighed by their importance for defense and expansion: Nations that invested in trade and military technology conquered those that didn’t.

The point of most technological innovations available to businesses is similar: to make them more competitive. Most also have the potential to destabilize the existing power structure. Is it any wonder monopolies often ignore technologies and practices that could make them more efficient?

Which brings us to you. As you ponder which new technologies to promote within your company, don’t become frustrated by organizational resistance. Remember, just because the technology might make the company more competitive, that doesn’t mean it’s attractive to middle managers and executives. For some, internal destabilization creates more risk than external competitiveness creates opportunity.

You need to know how to handle this contingent, but as CTO or CIO your natural allies are the other ones: Those who personally benefit when the whole company becomes more competitive.

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|In: Leadership|Last Updated:

Maybe they were just tired.

In the past, when I’ve mentioned evolutionary theory in this space, I’ve received mail challenging my misguided acceptance of natural selection written in the quantities and tones usually reserved for criticisms of OS/2. But my recent column promoting the value of evolutionary concepts in everyday business thinking provoked no protest (see Survival Guide, Sept. 2, page 51).

Time to try again, I guess.

One of the less-well understood subtleties of Darwinian theory is that fitness is like Einsteinian velocity: It’s relative. Nature selects those organisms that best fit their particular circumstances, not those that are best in any absolute sense.

Popular culture seems to prefer absolutism these days. Nonetheless, Darwinian relativism is a valuable thought process to apply to business situations. Take, for example, the popular notion of “best practices.” If the adoption of best practices is an important part of your operational plan it’s time to ask yourself, are you a business fundamentalist? In other words, do you really think there is such a thing as a practice that’s best in all circumstances? Or are you a Darwinian, understanding that the best you can find are practices that are optimal for your particular situation?

Not that best practices is a worthless idea. Some areas of business are pretty much the same across a wide variety of circumstances. Accounts payable is an area in which best practices really are “best” — there just isn’t that much difference from one company to another.

Except, of course, that even with something as prosaic as the process of paying vendors for goods and services you will find enormous differences if you peel the onion at all. That’s why the grocery industry was an early adopter of EDI (Electronic Data Interchange), while IT services (for example) lags: Supermarket chains process huge numbers of purchase transactions while making their profits on turns, so shaving even a few cents from transaction costs pays off. For IT services, with its higher margins and low transaction volume, EDI makes little sense.

None of which is to say you have nothing to learn from other companies. In fact, you can learn a lot. Think of it as the business equivalent of gene splicing — you can benefit from some other company’s evolutionary history without having to go through the pain of inventing a successful practice yourself. But be Darwinian, and make sure someone else’s best practice fits your business circumstances.

Genetic engineering isn’t, after all, always such a great idea.

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