Marketing Myopia

Biological Parallel

Kodak focused on film chemistry while customers wanted memories captured digitally—classic myopia. Koala bears demonstrate the biological equivalent: they evolved such extreme specialization on eucalyptus leaves that when habitat changes, they cannot adapt to alternative foods and face extinction. Marketing myopia is evolutionary overspecialization: optimizing so narrowly for current conditions ("we're in the film business") that you cannot pivot when the environment shifts. Generalists survive disruption; specialists often don't.