Skip to main content

Is it Better for a Business to Make Radical Change? Or Evolve?

Learn from evolution and copy and replicate
rather than create new processes.
There are times when a business owner decides that their current model just isn't working as they hoped it would, particularly in the early months and years.  The question becomes, should the entrepreneur just dump what they're doing now?  Or make incremental changes with an end goal in mind?

Research by a University of Hertfordshire Professor of Business Studies published in 2010 states that solutions for many of today's business challenges can be found in evolutionary processes.

According to Professor Geoffrey Hodgson at the University's Business School, businesses which are considering major change at the moment should proceed with caution; they could do better to learn from evolution and copy and replicate rather than create new processes.

"Change needs to be experimental and cautious," said Professor Hodgson. "We have to understand the cost of change. If we look to nature, we can find answers in the way in which biological evolution preserves information over a period. This helps to explain why many successful firms, when setting up new plants, try to copy exactly everything about the make-up and routines of the existing plants."
*  *  *  *  *
So there you have it: You're better off to make an incremental change, evaluate then consider your next step as you work toward an end goal.  I guess it's another way of saying, when making a change, don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

Suggested reading ~



Story Source:  Geoffrey M. Hodgson, Thorbjørn Knudsen. Generative replication and the evolution of complexity. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2010
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Earn a Living Shining Shoes. . . Really

Earning a Living as a Bootblack
Can someone make a living shining shoes in today's economy?  At on time there shoe shine boys as they were called were found on street corners across the country, thousands of them.  Many were from poor families and worked to help support themselves and their families.  Today, I found three established shoe shine stands in downtown Seattle, plus two bootblacks, the traditional name of those who shine shoes, working on the streets of Seattle.

Meet George Johnson, age 74 on October 20th, a self-employed operator of a shoe shine stand in downtown Seattle's Rainier Place.  George has been shining shoes for the last sixty years, starting in Arkansas and ending up some thirty years ago at the Washington Athletic club a few blocks from his current location.
"Sixty years," I asked him the day we met.  "You ever think of retiring?"

"Gonna work until I can't do it no more," he replied.  "I don't even think about i…
1 comment
Read more

The Facts of the Small Business Survival Rate

Back thirty years ago when I first wrote about small business, a hoary and horrible statistic was bandied about, even by some of the most experienced entrepreneurial pros: "80% of new businesses fail in their first five years." 

This "statistic" has appeared in more places than you can imagine, from the leading small business magazines, books, presentations by employees of SBDCs, the SBA, SCORE, Chambers of Commerce, even professors on the college level - who should know better than to quote un-sourced numbers.  It still shows up in small-business blogs today.

For some years, I searched for a source of that statisitic.  Never found where that number came from, leading me to believe that some self-appointed expert made it up.  To quote a character from the popular television show, M*A*S*H, "Horsepucky." 

Here is the truth about the survival rate of new start up businesses in the U.S. economy from two unimpeachable sources, The Marion Ewing Kauffman Foundati…
7 comments
Read more

The Seven Characteristics of the Creative Employee.

How to Find Good Employees:

On my post of February 18th of this year, we talked about the role of managing stupidity in the success of any organization.  "Stupidity Management" refers to the real need of a business to know the difference between routine tasks that must be completed by rote and those tasks that require innovation and fresh thinking.  

Every business has a need for discipline in tasks that must be performed the same way, each and every time.

Every business has a need to creative thinking and fresh ideas on certain other tasks or problems, just not every task of problem.  

The Hunt for the Creative Individual
There are certain jobs in every organization where you, the owner, need original thinking.  Or perhaps you're running a business that lives off original thinkers.  An advertising agency is a business where the company's assets walk out the door every day at five (ish).

Professor Øyvind L. Martinsen at BI Norwegian Business School has conducted a study to…
5 comments
Read more