Adaptability and Fitness

The free, online Dictionary, www.thefreedictionary.com/adapted, gives this definition for adapted: "To make suitable to or fit for a specific use or situation" as in, "to become adapted: a species that has adapted well to winter climes."

From Wikipedia, we get:

An adaptation is a characteristic of an organism that has been favored by natural selection and increases the fitness of its possessor. The concept is central to biology, particularly in evolutionary biology. The Oxford Dictionary of Science defines adaptation as "Any change in the structure or functioning of an organism that makes it better suited to its environment".

We found the concept of fitness in an earlier blog post. We have some kind of uncertainty principle here: In order to be fit you have to be less adaptable. If you're more adaptable, you are by definition less fit. It's hard to be both fit and adapted at the same time.

What do you think about this? Which are you, more fit or more adapted? Post a comment.

Entrepreneurship 2.0 is my entrepreneurship course. The ideas in it supply the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.

Fitness Landscape

The concept of fitness and fitness landscape has been borrowed from evolutionary biology. I've extended it to mean the environment within which an entrepreneurial organization (read "organism") must compete.

Organizations are more often seen these days as biological organisms, which grow organically with little cetralized authority, than as military units, developed from some central authority. Fitness in this context refers to the health of the organization doing the competing.

You can also make an analogy to an athlete. To win, athletes have to be adapted to their fitness environment. Long-distance running requires endurance and strong legs so runners have long, strong legs and comparatively less muscular upper bodies. Swimming requires the athlete to move fast through a dense substance (water). Swimmers therefore have strong arms and shoulders and narrow waists. Basketball requires a player to score points or prevent others from doing so. Therefore, basketball players are very tall. And so on. Take a basketball player and try to make him into marathoner, and you have a problem.

Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyclopedia, has a good article on it. Readers are encouraged to read that and follow the links and references.

What do you think? I'd like to know. Post a comment.

Entrepreneurship informs all of my professional activities. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschool.blogspot.com.