"... the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all."
Ecclesiastes 9:11 speaks of a puzzle that baffles the business world to this day. Why is it that companies that seem to have every advantage are overtaken by apparently weaker competitors?
Seeking a paradigm that might help explain this puzzle, some management theorists have turned to evolutionary theory.1 Charles Darwin proposed that random mutations in the gene pool of a species are the force that drives evolution. As conditions in the environment change, a series of apparently inconsequential mutations can make the difference between adapting and flourishing on the one hand, and declining or becoming extinct on the other. So too in the business arena: as market conditions change or technology advances, a series of small changes in the culture or organization of one company will keep it healthy while another, more rigid, slowly fossilizes.
An alternative vision of evolution was put forward by Darwin’s contemporary Jean Baptiste Lamarck. Lamarck believed that capabilities acquired by one generation of a...