Darwinism in Today's Business Climate

Darwin never coined the term “survival of the fittest.”

Let’s just get that out of the way.

The phrase that is most associated with Darwinism didn’t come from Darwin at all.

It came from Herbert Spencer, a philosopher best remembered for summarizing someone else’s work.

Spencer published the line in 1864, five years after On the Origin of Species.

Darwin didn’t love it at first, and didn’t love Spencer much, either.  He wrote about Spencer, “I seldom feel any wiser after reading him”.

His friend, Alfred Russel Wallace, did like the term and was persistent with Darwin.  He came around to it and ultimately added it into the fifth edition of Origin in 1869.

The phrase stuck.  It gave his ideas a brand.

And, it sounded like the kind of thing a guy with a giant beard and a keen interest in finches might say.

It also sounded true.

People misquote confidently all the time.  James Cagney never said “You dirty rat” in Taxi.

Darth Vader didn’t say “Luke, I am your father.”

Jerry Seinfeld never said, “What’s the deal with airline food?”

In fact SNL spoofed Seinfeld and his style of observational comedy in 1988, branding him as the “what’s the deal with..” guy before many knew his name.

The misquotes, well they feel right.

They match the character.  So, they survive.

What is more important about Darwin and the term is that he, himself, adapted to something new. 

In a way, adapting made his theories survive.

What’s the Deal with the Galapagos?

The phrase “survival of the fittest” is often misread as a call to strength.  Survival goes to the most dominant.  

The apex predator.

Except that’s not what Darwin meant.  He was fascinated by small changes that made the difference between thriving and dying out.

Maybe a little luck has something to do with it.  Luck, like being selected to circumnavigate the earth. 

Darwin wasn’t the first OR second choice for the trip on the HMS Beagle. 

He was third! 

He wasn’t the most dominant.  Two guys dropped out and he had a father who could foot the bill. Isn’t that luck? A small change that made the difference with thriving?

Darwinism, ironically, got him on the ship.

That’s why the more honest interpretation of Darwin’s work isn’t Spencer’s version.  It’s another Darwin quote that’s somehow even more popular.

You’ve seen it all over the internet, probably had a manager use it in an all-hands meeting, and look at it on a poster in your dentist’s office waiting room.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most adaptable to change.”

And guess what?  Darwin didn’t say that either.

It’s from a summary of his findings in a management class at LSU in the 1960s.

And yet it’s dead-on. He just didn’t come up with it. Another summary of his work that sounded better.

(By the way, there’s an entire website devoted to things Darwin didn’t say!)

Everyone’s Adpating

The ideas that stick aren’t always the ones we invent. They’re the ones that work.

People adapt.  So do businesses.

And its happening today in earnest, trying to survive tariff shocks, shifting policy, and supply chain roulette.

Some are throwing in the towel. Others are evolving. 

A few examples:

Loftie: When the Lamp Becomes the Business

Loftie is a sleep tech company. Their flagship product: a minimalist bedside lamp with soft light, no screens, and bedtime features designed to wean you off your phone.

On Liberation Day, tariffs on the clock jumped to 175%.  The tariff alone cost more than making the lamp.

So Loftie stopped making it.

With just 60 days of cash on hand, CEO Matthew Hassett made a major change. He focused on software: AI-generated bedtime stories, ambient noise, focus timers, meditation prompts.

No tariffs on the cloud, yet.

Purrfect Portal: 80% Closer to Home

Lisa Harrington runs Purrfect Portal an FBA-native pet product brand. Cat doors, dog harnesses, a tidy little seven-figure business of goods made in China.

Then, tariffs went from 54% to 104%, which became 125%.

Does anyone really know what they are today or when the extension really ends?

By the end of this year, 80% of her catalog will be made in a factory in Rhode Island.

The Import Team is Getting a Bonus

I recently met with the President of a mid-size company.  They sell a range of industrial products, some distributed, some under their own label. 

He told me that he wasn’t certain if the company was going to turn a profit this year, but regardless, he said, the import team was getting a bonus.

Almost every company I chat with is moving heaven and earth to find new suppliers, or, incentivizing their current suppliers to open up shop elsewhere. 

These businesses are a part of the thousands and thousands recalibrating today. From raising prices - which everyone will do inevitably - to discontinuing products, to setting up in new countries, change is the new, new thing.

And while it’s fun to think about moving production back here, the vast majority of companies are trying to move from China to somewhere else in Asia.

This isn’t new, companies have been refiguring their supply chains since COVID.  Some, even prior. 

Single country political risk meant diversifying.

Today, the single country risk is at home. 

The work glove world (my traditional stomping grounds) might have it better than most niches.  I’ve personally worked with factories in over a dozen countries, not including China.

Most companies in other industries have been levered too heavily to China, making this more difficult. 

While it’s not easy to move a factory, or set up an operation in a new country, having the diversity of sources makes the tariff wahack-a-mole more palatable.

The Takeaway

Back to Darwin.

He didn’t coin “survival of the fittest.”

He didn’t write the adaptability quote.

He read what Spencer had written and at first, wasn’t impressed with the phrase..or with Spencer! 

Eventually, persuaded, he updated Origin of Species and started using it.

The phrase he borrowed worked better than what he’d been saying. So, he used it.

The “adaptability” quote isn’t his, yet he adapted.

Which is what he’d been saying about other species and was kind of the point of his work.

Darwinism in today’s business climate means going out of the comfort zone, keeping what still works, and finding new concepts to test.  Small changes that can lead to big results.

Today it’s for survival.

Stay in touch 

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You can contact me at [email protected] or LinkedIn. 

Stay safe out there!