Acacia

Acacia seedlings deploy thorns before they deploy leaves - physical defense from day one. It's expensive: thorns cost energy that could go to growth. But browsing animals can kill a defenseless seedling in seconds; thorns significantly improve survival against herbivory. This is the early defense strategy: pay the cost upfront because the alternative is death. Acacias grow in African savannas where herbivore pressure is intense and constant. They evolved to assume attack, not hope for its absence.

But acacia's real lesson appears in comparison to rainforest trees. African savanna acacias average only 5-10 meters tall; tropical rainforest trees average 40-60 meters. The difference isn't genetic potential - it's competitive equilibrium. In open savanna, height advantage is small (no dense canopy competition). In rainforest, height advantage is everything (shade equals death). The environment sets the growth limit through competition intensity. This is frequency-dependent selection: how tall you need to be depends on how tall everyone else is.

The strategic principle is ruthless: Optimal investment in defense versus growth depends on your competitive environment's intensity. Acacias teach that defense-heavy strategies make sense in high-threat, low-competition environments, while growth-heavy strategies make sense in low-threat, high-competition ones. Most companies get this backward - they over-invest in growth when threats are high and over-invest in defense when competition is intense.