Customer
An organism whose survival fitness is interlinked with a company's survival fitness through resource exchange. Not a passive recipient of value but an active participant in a mutualistic or parasitic relationship.
Biological Context
In symbiotic relationships, organisms exchange resources in ways that affect mutual fitness. Pollinators and flowers, cleaner fish and reef fish, mycorrhizal fungi and plant roots—each relationship type reveals different degrees of dependency and benefit. Obligate mutualism means neither party survives alone; facultative mutualism means both benefit but can survive independently. Customer relationships span this spectrum.
Business Application
Understanding customers as symbionts changes strategy from 'acquisition and retention' to 'what kind of mutual fitness relationship are we creating?' Companies building mutualistic relationships invest in customer success and long-term value. Companies building parasitic relationships optimize for extraction until the host immune response triggers—regulation, lawsuits, mass defection.