Adapt or Die

About about 1 1/2 years ago Fast Company hosted an event here in Washington D.C. at a posh restaurant, literally about 6 blocks from the White House.  Jeff Chu,  a senior editor at Fast Company,  and a number of his staff  put together a 'dine and discussion' event and engaged the group that night in conversations about business, entrepreneurship and innovation.  I attended (with a couple of close colleagues) the invite only affair of about 25 to 30 business persons in the DC/Virginia/Maryland metropolitan area.  I met some very cool and interesing people that night and left with a small army of ideas that would help Vosica develop new, powerful and viable business ideas and solutions for our clients.

As a 'thank you' from Fast Company for attending the dinner (and for being great fans of the magazine) one of their parting gifts for us was a book written by their editors and writers called The Rules of Business - 55 Essential Ideas to Help Smart People (and Organizations) Perform at Their Best.  Now I had been wanting to order this book ever since it came out (in 2005) but never got around to it.  So now I didn't even have to buy the book - I got it for free!  SWEEET!

Now 1 1/2 years later I still hadn't read the damn thing.  But just yesterday I finally forced myself to pick it up and begin reading it (well the first chapter anyways).  In doing so I came across, what is possibly the most important idea anyone should etch permanently into their psyche - The first rule of business is the same as the first rule of life: Adapt or die.

Its really a fairly simple concept, yet for individuals, groups, or companies it is such a herculean task to assess the market, see where your business or organization is at and then make changes accordingly.  These are necessary things that simply need to be done in order to continue to be successful.

Prime examples:

• Apple revolutionizes the mp3 player market by creating the ipod.  In order to keep pace and stay competitive with this new market gamechanger,  Microsoft shortly releases the Zune (now creating a smart, creative and successful adapt or die strategy is another conversation).

• Tapping the power of the Internet, Netflix launches its 'movies by mail' mini empire in the making. Blockbuster, seeing the growth of this new company and realizing the serious threat posed to their primacy, are forced to create online services as well.

These are just two quick examples of the adapt or die rule.  There are literally thousands more out there.

In one of our earlier posts we talked about when Shift Happens, where the focus was on how the market is changing, how ideas are evolving and how the world is becoming more complex. In summary, the final question was; what does it all mean, particularly for you?   Well what it means is plain and simple:  Adapt or die.  Take it or leave it - I highly recommend you take it.  The reason being; the only thing in life that stays the same is change.

So just a little something to think about. . .

If you hate change, ok, that's fine. But I promise you (and rest assured) you'll like irrelevancy even less.