Natural Selection and Entrepreneurship

Although the present rate of change itself is unprecedented, innovations occur at lightening speeds and when you buy something on Monday, it is outdated by Friday.

by: Adrian Reid
Nov 28, 2008

In 1859 Charles Darwin in his groundbreaking book ‘Origin of the Species’ introduced an incredible concept to the world called natural selection, where favorable traits become more common in a species after time. In other words, they undergo changes that allow them to live more successfully in an environment. For example, a fox that lives in colder regions will eventually, through time develop a thicker fur than those of its predecessors that lived before it. Now I can hear you asking yourself, what does this Biology lesson have to do with the entrepreneurial spirit? 

The reason I am inviting you to look into the microscope is to see the striking similarities between natural selection and entrepreneurship. The same way that climatic changes cause a new breed of fox to evolve, changes in our economic and social landscape invite a new kind of entrepreneur. What are some of these changes? Although the present rate of change itself is unprecedented, innovations occur at lightening speeds and when you buy something on Monday, it is outdated by Friday. This means that we need a type of entrepreneur who is not only capable of accommodating rapid change, but also capable of anticipating it and in some cases even initiating it. The ability to use change for economic and or social advantage is now a survival skill in this new business climate.

What will the changes that the signing of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) bring to you, your business and family? In a world where globalization is king, entrepreneurs can no longer rely on the ‘they’. Whether the ‘they’ are the wealthy nations of the world, the government, or large firms, ‘they’ can no longer be relied on to provide you with wealth, jobs or homes. Increasingly, the destinies of our lives, families, organizations and even our island nations depend on us. Our countries need people who can see opportunities, create and build, initiate and achieve. This is the new brave world we live in, and it is no longer an option to rely on a firm to employ you for thirty years and give you the two pens, a Mont Blanc watch and your pension. 

Are you developing these traits to survive in our new world? 

Remember that natural selection produces offspring that are better than their parents. So what about our youth, our children and our legacy? Do they have these innate survival traits and if not, why are we not teaching them? More than ever, it is the youth who are the ones that will need these skills to hunt for an economic livelihood if they are to dominate in the global jungle.

Even if owning a business is not the end result, the fact that our youth are not evolving with the entrepreneurial traits of creativity, risk taking, and a stubborn ambition, the chances of their survival decreases. The sad thing is that our present educational system is not geared to producing the new type of person needed who can create and build. The schools unfortunately still produce a ‘go to school and find a job young person’, which may have worked twenty years ago, but is certainly no longer relevant.

In order to strengthen the ‘entrepreneurial genetic pool’ of our Caribbean youth, one of the programs that Legaci Marketing Systems Inc. has embarked on is the creation of Camp Entrepreneur. This is a summer program where we teach young people how to turn ideas into money-making businesses. Over the last two years we have been using interactive presentations by successful entrepreneurs, videos, workshops, and hands-on sessions to teach young people how to think creatively, identify opportunities and make and manage their money. On the final day of the camp the participants get to actually run their chosen business and make real money. This program has been lauded by both the Governments of Barbados and Guadeloupe and there is the desire to see similar initiatives mushrooming across the Caribbean region.

This is Legaci’s contribution to hasten the evolution of our youth from dependant employee to employer, or at the very least and employee with an entrepreneurial outlook. This is vital because the species that do not evolve through natural selection become extinct-so embrace the evolution.