Adaptive Radiation
Organizations undergo adaptive radiation when entering new markets and rapidly diversifying into multiple specialized business units or product lines.
Empty niches don't stay empty. The question is whether you fill them or your competitors do.
Adaptive radiation is the rapid diversification of a single ancestral lineage into multiple forms, each adapted to a different ecological niche. It requires three ingredients - the Radiation Triangle: ecological opportunity (empty niches or access to underexploited resources), evolvability (genetic variation and developmental flexibility to generate novel traits), and reproductive isolation (mechanisms that prevent diverging populations from interbreeding and homogenizing). When these conditions align, a single lineage can explode into extraordinary diversity in geologically brief timescales.
Examples include Darwin's finches (13+ species from one ancestor in the Galápagos), African cichlids (500+ species in Lake Victoria in ~15,000 years), Hawaiian silverswords (30+ species from one colonizing plant), and Caribbean anoles (150+ species occupying distinct microhabitats).
Business Application of Adaptive Radiation
Organizations undergo adaptive radiation when entering new markets and rapidly diversifying into multiple specialized business units or product lines. Success requires the Strategic Radiation Triangle: market opportunity, organizational modularity, and structural separation.
Adaptive Radiation Appears in 3 Chapters
The Radiation Triangle - ecological opportunity, evolvability, and reproductive isolation - explains when lineages explode into extraordinary diversity.
The Radiation Triangle →Darwin's finches demonstrate adaptive radiation in fast-forward: same genes, different environments, different solutions across 13+ species.
Darwin's finches as radiation model →Lake Tanganyika's 200 cichlid species and Hawaiian silverswords show how radiation fills ecological space when opportunity, variation, and isolation align.
Radiation across ecosystems →