Evolutionary Tracking
For long-term industry shifts, organizations must fundamentally transform their capabilities, not just adjust tactics.
On timescales longer than individual lifespans - centennial to millennial cycles - adaptation must be genetic. Large mammals adapted to Ice Age cycles through morphological evolution (body size changes per Bergmann's rule), coat thickness changes, migration capacity, and dietary flexibility. But evolutionary tracking has a critical limitation: evolutionary lag. Populations adapt to past conditions with a delay of generations. The Quaternary Extinction (12,000 years ago) demonstrates this failure - climate warmed faster than previous interglacials, and megafauna couldn't evolve quickly enough.
Business Application of Evolutionary Tracking
For long-term industry shifts, organizations must fundamentally transform their capabilities, not just adjust tactics. But beware of lag - by the time adaptation is complete, conditions may have shifted again. Evolutionary tracking works for predictable, slow cycles but fails for rapid, novel changes.