Founder Effects
Organizational founder effects are the distinctive culture, practices, and values established by founders.
A decision that would have been impossible in a large organization succeeded because the effective population size was small enough for values to override profit.
Founder effects occur when a new population is established by a small number of individuals from a larger population. The founding individuals carry only a sample of the genetic variation from the source population, creating genetic differences. In metapopulations, frequent recolonization events create repeated founder effects, increasing genetic drift at the metapopulation level.
Business Application of Founder Effects
Organizational founder effects are the distinctive culture, practices, and values established by founders. High migration rates dilute founder effects: when migrants outnumber existing employees 2:1, migrant norms dominate. Zoom's engineering retained founder effects because Eric Yuan remained involved; sales lost them because migration rate was too high and founder wasn't present.
Founder Effects Appears in 2 Chapters
Founder effects are diluted by high migration rates - when migrants outnumber existing employees 2:1, migrant norms dominate over founding culture.
Migration diluting founder effects →Afrikaner Huntington's and Amish Ellis-van Creveld syndrome demonstrate how founding population bottlenecks fix rare alleles at high frequency.
Genetic founder effects →