Sagarin applies adaptability lessons to the business world
Remember when Apple's stock traded at $7 a share? I do, because that's when I sold my shares. Tech experts' sage predictions had convinced me that the Mac would never make a dent in the PC market. As it turned out, the Mac didn't need to make a dent, because Apple mutated its cute computer DNA into cute music players and phones that fit massive unfilled niches. Yet even the genius architect of this turnaround made faulty predictions sometimes. Remember the invention Steve Jobs said was going to be "bigger than the PC"? You may have seen a mall cop riding one recently.
Even the best of us are horrible at predicting the future. That's too bad, because our world is full of risk that we'd love to avoid and opportunity that we'd love to seize.
Fortunately, there's a rich source of lessons on how to thrive in an unpredictable world, and it has been cranking out success stories for 3.5 billion years. It's called biology.
