Birds Do It, Bees Do It. Entrepreneurs, Let’s Do It too..

Dr. Rajiv Tandon
8 min readSep 13, 2015

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Birds do it, bees do it, Even educated fleas do it
In Spain, the best upper sets do it, Lithuanians and Letts do it
The Dutch in old Amsterdam do it, Not to mention the Finns
Folks in Siam do it, think of Siamese twins

Romantic sponges, they say, do it, Oysters down in oyster bay do it
Cold cape cod clams ‘gainst their wish do it, Even lazy jellyfish do it
Electric eels, I might add, do it, Though it shocks ‘em I know
Why ask if shad do it? Waiter, bring me shad roe

In shallow shoals English soles do it, Goldfish in the privacy of bowls do it
Let’s do it, let’s fall in love

The immortal song sung by the legendary Ella Fitzgerald says it all- every one and everything does it.

Nature has designed a broad preference for the way of doing it. There are exceptions of course: Dandelions, Potatoes and a few icky mini creatures. Nevertheless, sexual reproduction is the overwhelming choice of Nature to procreate. Cloning is so rarely done that it is seems down right unnatural.

From a purely efficiency perspective, cloning is so darned efficient that it raises the question why is it un-natural? What is wrong with it? Certainly, Mother Nature knows how to do cloning. But, with a very few exceptions, she has given up on it as the natural way of doing things. She uses it for virtually every species, plant or animal.

Image: 123rf.com

Millions of pollen go out for only a few to become seeds. Out of thousands of seeds only a few will sprout seedlings, and eventually become trees. Why?

Consider the thousands of sea turtle eggs laid on a beach, of which a handful will grow into an adult turtle. Why?

If you think it doesn’t happen in the human species, ask yourself, “ How many sperm does it take to fertilize an egg?” One! So why send out an army in every encounter?

Far more resources are spent on creating the progeny than ever reach fruition, let alone maturity. Why ? Why? Why?

Is nature wasteful? Yes, clearly seen this way, nature is incredibly wasteful.

Charles Darwin said of nature. “Clumsy, wasteful, blundering low & horribly cruel.”

It cannot be the pleasure of it, because Nature could have easily made cloning so much more fun!

Is there a grand design in Nature’s wastefulness?

This has been a question that has vexed scientists for a long time. Only recently has it become apparent why sexual reproduction trumps cloning.

While both sexual reproduction, as well as cloning, meet the criteria of procreation; only the former is capable of meeting the biggest threat to evolution- the very survival of the species faced by a new threat or a catastrophic “event”.

That is how Nature has continued to survive for millennia. According to Hindu cosmology the lower world goes through dissolution, Pralaya (Sanskrit) ; but, nature survives and marches on- even to re-create human life all over again.

Even if you disregard that mythology, scientists know that Dinosaurs first appeared over 200 million years ago, and were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 100 million years. An “event” led to the extinction of most dinosaur groups and some three-quarters of plant and animal species on Earth. Even a dominant species was not immune to annihilation due to that “event”. Some birds, a variant of the species, survived that catastrophic event and their descendants continue the lineage to the present day.

Naturalists have seen the survival of animal species coming under the impact of new forms of parasites in as little as one generation.

The more iterations of the evolutionary process, the more are the chances to be subjected to an “event”, however rare. If unprotected, the species are vulnerable in spite of their dominance. Longevity demands that the progeny not be a cloned offspring.

What happens if you are a Cloner. We saw the recent impact during 1845 to 1852. A potato blight ravaged potato crops throughout Europe and caused mass starvation, disease, and emigration in Ireland . With all the potatoes genetically identical, they provided no immunity against the fungus. During the Irish Potato Famine, approximately 1 million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland. A single strain of blight was instrumental in wiping out an entire crop. A variant strain survived and its off-springs are still providing us with french fries.

The sexual way of reproduction is not without its issues. It is a roll of the dice. With each generation, two recessive genes come together to be expressed anew. Usually, such a combination leads to a similar individual offspring. Sometimes, the result is a birth defect. A “mistake” so severe that it may lead to pain, misery, and even early death. But, this design parameter is for life to take the 1 in a million chance that one innovative combination will come about that will be the one that actually advances the species. Even with odds that low, nature doesn’t stop with the high “failure” rate, it just keeps trying again and again for that one chance.

Each new generation continues to be loaded with mutations. Most of these result in either no change or a “mistake”. But in a rare few cases, totally by chance, one mutation appears that makes it better able to survive — and be more adaptive to the changing conditions. That is the reason nature is tolerant of its own “mistakes”, and it makes those “failures” freely. What we see as “wasteful”, is a well planned strategy driven by evolutionary pressures. These one in a million chances develop new strains that are more capable of surviving the “events” and “blights” that will emerge from time to time with the changing conditions.

In an interesting way, in many cases, the wastefulness ends up not being a waste after all. Trees can’t protect their young, and so they have to hope that of the thousands or even millions they produce, a handful will not get eaten by other life forms before reaching maturity. Same can be said for animals. Many have to be procreated for a few to survive predators.

But, the seeds make it possible for the food chain that surrounds the trees to continue. Animals, even humans rely on them as a food source. And without that food chain, the trees would surely go extinct for want of pollinators. Animals would starve and become extinct. It is a balanced ecosystem.

This cycle applies to all life forms. Birds, mammals, insects, even mold and fungi and other organisms — they rely on the huge output of these plants and/or animals to survive as well as grow.

It’s that symbiosis that keeps nature going. Trees and animals may not know this grand design — of excess seeds and of evolution, because that occurs over generations. But, it keeps nature marching on in spite of any one species becoming extinct or unviable. While the evolutionary changes are slowly taking place the bulk of the “waste” provides a food chain for the present survival.

Nature is not concerned about efficiency it has to be effective for a very long time.Think of it as a really a well balanced, brilliant plan!

Only in sheltered human environments, surrounded by brick and stone and cement, we mistakenly call natures grand plan as wasteful. In spite of all the inefficiencies, there are extremely good reasons of effectiveness for being inefficient.

What are the lessons we take away from the brilliant proven process of Nature? It is to design:

  1. Survival capability under changing conditions, and

2. Use the “excess (waste)” to provide sustenance for the present.

How can we apply these lessons to our advantage? After all humans are a selfish creatures. We use nature to our advantage. Agriculture is all about humans using this natural growth of plants and animals to manage species that are of use to us and provide sustenance for human life to grow and prosper. We grow food for now, as well as “better” strains of apples and roses for the future. This use is well known. Over centuries we have developed a whole set of industries to take advantage of this knowledge.

Implications for Entrepreneurs

All of us can learn from Nature because everyone will have to innovate to evolve and live in the future. Nature offers those lessons.

(P.S. I have just learnt of a new science called Biomimcry; an approach to innovation that seeks sustainable solutions to human challenges by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies.)

A corporation, as we have designed them, is a relatively new development. We all know that the life cycle of a company is about the life cycle of a human inividual. New ventures are born with grand fan fare, most die an infant, some prosper and grow and ultimately die anyway or are eaten up by predators (sound familiar?).

Today, we and our institutions live in an ever faster changing environment, dominated by forces that we cannot control. To prosper, and perhaps even to survive, we must constantly evolve. This evolution must happen at many different levels and in time dimensions that vary from immediate to hours, days and years. In any case, if we want to be successful, the time horizon for us is much shorter than what is available to our institutions and society.

Larger institutions are trapped in a box defined by sociopolitical forces and their past successes. However, the primary role of an entrepreneur is neither maintaing status quo, nor incremental innovation. Their role is to get outside the box by creating new processes, products, concepts and organizations. These processes have to be inventive, and in themselves cannot be incremental. They have to be seminal. Such disruptive processes are inherently more uncertain, riskier and “expensive”.

Since these sociopolitical forces are beyond the direct control of the entrepreneurs, they must innovate more quickly and with fewer resources. Fortunately, Nature also has some complex and effective mechanisms for increasing the economy of these “expensive” activities. We can select those alternative approaches which, though vetted by nature, are more suitable for entrepreneurs.

As a mentor I have always advocated the use of this “Natural” process and found it to be very impactful. In other Posts I will provide details, inspired by the lessons learnt from Nature, to design entrepreneurial ventures for their survival and growth strategies.

This is a revised and updated version of a post originally posted under the title: Learn from Nature: Time to be Wasteful

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Dr. Rajiv Tandon is an Entrepreneur, Educator and Mentor. He facilitates peer groups for CEOs of fast-growing companies in Minnesota. To learn more, sign up to get the email newsletter.

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Dr. Rajiv Tandon
Dr. Rajiv Tandon

Written by Dr. Rajiv Tandon

Advocate for the future of entrepreneurship in Minnesota. Facilitates peer groups and runs programs for propelling ideas into ventures

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