Can biology teach us anything about innovation? The essence of Darwinism is that progress is created by adaptation to changed conditions. What starts as a random mutation can also spread to become the norm through a process of natural selection.The same is surely true with innovation. New ideas are mutations created when two or more old ideas combine. For instance, Virgin Atlantic Airways is what happens when you cross an entertainment company with an airline business.

Virgin is also a good example of mutation and adaptation. The music retail business was created when a postal strike threatened to shut down the fledgling mail order record company. Virgin Atlantic was the result of an unsolicited approach from outside the company. Virgin Blue (a low-cost airline in Australia) is a similar story.

In my experience, what makes Virgin innovative is a strong sense of self, an ability to experiment, the skill to cross-fertilise ideas and a willingness to change. The company has largely grown, not through the unfolding of some master plan, but through an accumulation of learning and ideas caused by threats, accidents and luck.

So, if external events and adaptation are the driving forces of biological evolution, is it possible to develop an innovation process that seeks out accidents and mutations?
This is an idea being developed by companies like Brand Genetics in the UK www.brandgenetics.com and Dr Ron Alexander in Australia.

The list of things created by accident is certainly impressive; Aspirin, Band-Aid, Diners Club, DNA Finger Printing, Dynamite, Inoculation, Jell-O, Lamborghini cars, Microwave Ovens, Nylon, Penicillin, Velcro and Vodafone to name just a few.

However, one of the defining characteristics of business is a preoccupation with orderly process (“if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”). So it’s hard to imagine corporate cultures embracing randomness, or agreeing with John Lennon who said:“Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans”.

Accidents are born of experimentation, but automotive and fashion are almost the only industries that publicly experiment with radical mutations. What, for example, is the soft drink industry equivalent of a concept car at the Detroit Motor Show?

Zara, the Spanish clothing retailer, www.zara.com is a classic example of experimentation and adaptation. Store managers send customer feedback and observations to in-house design teams via PDAs. This helps the company to spot fashion trends and adapt merchandise to local tastes.

Just-in-time production (an idea transferred from the automotive industry), then gives the company an edge in terms of speed and flexibility. The result is a 3-week turnaround time for new products (the industry average is 9 months), and 10,000 new designs every year – none of which stay in store for more than 4 weeks.

The analogy of biology also leads to an interesting idea about whether companies are best thought of in mechanical or biological terms. Traditionally we have likened companies to machines. Organisations are mechanical devices (engines if you like) that can be tuned by experts to deliver optimum performance.

For companies that are looking to fine tune what they already do this is probably correct. A product like the Porsche 911 evolves due to a process of continuous improvement and slowly changing environmental factors. The focus is on repetition. Development is logical and linear.

However, if you’re seeking to revolutionise a product or market the biological model is an interesting thinking tool. In this context biology reminds us that random events and non-linear thinking cause developmental jumps. Unlike machines, living things have the ability to identify and translate opportunities and threats into strategies for survival. A good example is Mercedes-Benz working with Swatch watches to create the Smart car www.thesmart.co.uk

Creative leaps are usually the result of accidental cross-fertilisation (variation) or rapid adaptation caused by the threat of change. Hence the importance of identifying an enemy, setting unrealistic deadlines and using diverse teams to create paradigm shifts.

The later is a route employed by MIT who mix different disciplines together. As Nicholas Negroponte puts it: “ New ideas do not necessarily live within the borders of existing intellectual domains. In fact they are most often at the edges and in curious intersections”.

This is a thought echoed by Edward Be Bono who talks about the need for provocation and discontinuity. In order to come up with a new solution you must first jump laterally to a different start or end point.

For example, if you want to revolutionise the hotel industry you need to identify the assumptions upon which the industry operates and then create a divergent strategy.
This could lead you to invent Formule 1 Hotels www.formule1.com (keep prices low by focussing on beds, hygiene and privacy), or another value innovator, easyHotel www.easyhotel.com (keep rooms cheap by making guests hire their own bed linen and clean their own rooms).

What else can you do to create these jumps? A good place to start is to look at the edge (fringe) of existing markets. Here you’ll find the misfits and the rebels. Companies that see things differently. People young enough not to realise that new ideas are impossible, or old enough not to care.

How else can you use a Darwinian approach to innovation? Here are five ideas:

• Look at the big evolutionary picture — what are the driving forces?
• Create mutations – unusual combinations of people and ideas.
• Look for new ideas and conditions that could disrupt your market.
• Treat accidents as opportunities for divergence and adaptation.
• Co-operate with other companies (create mutually beneficial eco-systems)

Finally, remember the words of Charles Darwin:“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change”.

My columns for Fast Company are being migrated to the new Fast Company.com website. In the meantime I’m posting as many of the originals as I can find here. Be aware that some of these go back to 2004 and many ideas have moved on to say the least. ‘Columns’ also includes various other magazine and newspaper writings.

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There’s nothing like being in the right place at the right time. Smart companies spend big money on research and development to ensure that their offerings are up to date — and to make sure they don’t miss out on lucrative new opportunities. Traditionally, this practice has been the sole stomping ground of qualitative and quantitative research firms, but not any more. After all, nobody anticipated that trendspotting itself would become a trend. Of course, forecasting and analyzing trends is not new. Automobile manufacturers have strategically planned the colors of new makes and models for decades, and fashion designers use forecasting to predict what we’ll wear three or four seasons ahead. What is new is the emergence and widespread adoption of trendspotting by organizations outside such industries. Companies such as Wal-Mart, Campbell’s Soup, Lego, Marks & Spencer, Virgin, and ICI all use trend forecasting as part of their innovation processes and as a way to anticipate what their customers will want in the future. Why is this happening now? Many business leaders have lost confidence in traditional consumer research methodologies, especially when applied to innovation. This also ties into a general decline of trust (itself a major trend), the increasing acceleration of business, and the quest for certainty and security. There is also the belief that, in a scientific age, it should be possible to predict what’s going to happen next. Companies are therefore constantly looking for new ways to ensure that they don’t become the victims of change and end up with a warehouse full of unsold inline scooters. Remember the Razor? That’s why trends can be double-edged swords. On the one hand, they are very useful. They can provide a strategic framework for innovation and help organizations keep existing products and services relevant. But being aware of trends — developing and otherwise — is not foolproof.

An American prostitute called “Kirsten” has had sex with the Governor of New York.
He’s now very sorry and she’s now very famous. It’s happened before and it will happen again. And let’s be honest, this kind of behaviour does have certain precedents (or is that presidents?) in the White House. But the real story here isn’t about sex or infidelity, it’s about the making of celebrity and, in particular, how different generations view privacy.

How “Kristen” got outed is unclear. Once her real name became known there was almost no candid detail about her that the media — or anyone else with an internet connection — didn’t know about. Ashley Dupre’s MySpace page has already received five million hits. We know what she likes and what she thinks. We also know she has 1,799 ‘friends’ — or 1,798 if you exclude an ex Governor known as “Mr Clean.”

It is alleged that “Mr Clean’ got caught is because of a phone tap, which is touchingly old-fashioned. However, it is doubtful whether this is the only evidence. No form of communication is safe these days. Neither are digital payments. Assuming he didn’t pay in cash for ‘services rendered’ there will be a data trail linking “Mr Clean” to “dirty” Ms Dupre. If the media is lucky there might even be some ‘material’ evidence that makes its way into court – or perhaps onto eBay. In other words, privacy in a digital and connected age is dead. Gen Y knows this and doesn’t care. Gen X and the Boomer Generation either don’t realise or are horrified.

As for the young Ms Dupre (22), she probably can’t see what all the fuss is about.
After all, posting personal material on a social networking site like MySpace is de-rigour these days. It’s the way young people keep in touch. These are places where Gen Y hangs, shops and expose themselves safe in the knowledge that their privacy-obsessed parents have no idea what they’re doing. It’s a way to see and be seen and to keep in touch with friends, especially if you have 1,799 of them.

But in Cyberspace nothing ever dies. If you upload something there is no guarantee that you will ever be able to get it back again. It could be cut and pasted and appear on countless other websites and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Equally, whilst you might deactivate an account on a social networking site but there is no guarantee that personal information will be removed from the website’s servers.

So if, as a 19-year-old, you appear in a rather explicit amateur video on YouPorn or post drunken photographs on Facebook or it could stay up forever for prospective marriage partners or future employers or to see.

So far, legal cases concerning the issue of privacy online are almost unheard of but it’s surely only a matter of time. I already know of Gen X employers that use social networking sites to research prospective Gen Y employees and only last week I heard of a forty-year-old boss stumbling upon a conversation that one of his junior members of staff was having online about whether or not to quit his “horrible” job.

It’s a tangled world wide web we are weaving.

Maybe this bothers you. Maybe it doesn’t. Your attitude towards privacy will depend on how old you are. If you are aged thirty or forty plus you probably cringe at the thought of allowing the world to peer past the net curtains into your life. How could anyone be so naive as to be a prostitute and have a MySpace page?

But if you’re younger you probably can’t see what the problem is. Ms Dupre will sell her story and gain instant global celebrity. She told the truth about herself and has emerged victorious. There will be a book, a talkshow and a range of politically incorrect underwear.

So what will happen in the future? The internet has removed many of the factors that limit our behaviour offline, but this boundary between real and virtual life will disappear, especially as mobile devices become the primary portals of connectivity.

We will also see the emergence of technology refuseniks. In most cases these will be older people ‘unplugging’ as a way of dealing with privacy concerns or information overload. However, many younger people will also move ‘off network’ because the social pressure to be always online or collect digital friends will create a kind of Facebook fatigue or MySpace malaise. Similarly, younger people will use multiple online personas to protect their identity online.

The good news is that all this digital connectivity will make individuals and institutions more transparent, which will make us more honest, but it will also mean much less privacy. Corey Worthington would understand.