Darwin 2022 - Ruminations Compendium

Collected reflections from the July 2022 Darwin trip, a narrative of adaptation, organisational change, and expansion can live in a single place.

July 19 – Lemmings And Launchpads

There is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally increases at so high a rate, that if not destroyed the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair. Even slow breeding man has doubled in twenty five years, and at this rate in a few thousand years there would literally be no standing room for his progeny. – Charles Darwin

Like the lemming marching and diving into the ocean to self‑regulate, humanity plunges itself into vices of its own creation: alcohol, drugs, violence, and greed. Perhaps the next plunge is into the real ocean or into the vacuum of space, chasing more room in which to stand or float. Failure in harsh environments creates room by removing weaker individuals, or greater resilience by rewarding the most adaptable. Colonial Australia itself was founded on such selection—the most adaptable individuals and the strictest rule enforcers reshaped an unforgiving frontier.

July 20 – Organisational Evolution In Flight

Seeing that a few members of such water-breathing classes as the Crustacea and Mollusca are adapted to live on the land, and seeing that we have flying birds and mammals, flying insects of vast diversified types, and formerly had flying reptiles. It is conceivable that flying fish, which now glide far through air, slightly rising and falling by the aid of their fluttering fins, might have been modified into perfectly winged animals. – Charles Darwin

The ability to skim over water for a few metres comes from external tweaks, but the ability to cross the Pacific like a Godwin Tern comes from internal rewiring: hollow bones, high metabolism, and a brain with a built‑in compass. Organisations face the same distinction. A brief digital-transformation spasm can bolt on an app or a website, yet sustaining that flight demands internal metamorphosis and a sense of direction from leadership. Caterpillars become butterflies through wholesale change—so must companies that aspire to be more than flying fish.

July 23 – Questions For The Corporate Naturalist

1. Where are the transitional forms?
   Organisations with no lines on the org chart operate as pure adhocracy. Hidden behind corporate veils, they are like pupae in cocoons, waiting to emerge in a more defined shape.
2. How can specialised organs evolve?
   Marketing machines, technology muscle, sales teeth, enterprise-planning backbone, analyst frontal lobes—each department is an organ honed for a specific survival task.
3. Is behaviour or instinct inheritable?
   Culture answers this. The rituals, stories, and incentives that survive layoffs and leadership changes become the genetic code of the firm.
4. Why are some species sterile when crossed, while others are fertile?
   Some mergers and acquisitions thrive; others fail because the two organisational genomes cannot integrate and diverge instead of hybridising.

July 24 – Conquering New Lands

He who believes in the struggle for existence and in the principle of natural selection, will acknowledge that every organic being is constantly endeavouring to increase in numbers; and that if any one being vary ever so little, either in habits or structure, and thus gain an advantage over some of that inhabitant, however different it may be from its own place, it will seize on the place of that inhabitant. – Charles Darwin

International expansion is a contest for ecological niches. Bringing hard‑won optimisations from one country to another is a bid to displace incumbents. The organisations that vary—by process, by product, by mindset—claim new ground first.