Flash Forward

Management thinkers have compared business to sports, war, physics and many other fields. Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Charles H. Fine is one of many recent theorists who has attempted to explain business in terms of biology.

In his book, Clockspeed: Winning Industry Control in the Age of Temporary Advantage (Perseus), Fine compares fast-evolving industries such as the computer software sector to short-lived organisms like fruit flies. Biologists study fruit flies, which live only two weeks or so, to learn a lot about genetics in a short time, Fine notes. By looking at computers and telecommunications, two especially fast-evolving fields, he hopes to discern lessons about how all businesses can develop traits to help them survive in a fast-paced world.

It may seem like a stretch to seek business solutions in the world of biology. But biological concepts like tipping points, which describe how species succeed in competitive environments, also seem to explain how companies like Microsoft achieve such powerful market dominance. And looking at things in a different way, using tools developed for another purpose, can be helpful, Fine notes. "Sometimes if you use somebody else's model on your problem," he says, "you gain insight you didn't [have] before."

Business-as-biology may prove to be a long-lived idea. Fine notes that physics has been most commonly compared to business so far. In the 21st century, he says, biology will replace physics as the scientific place to be. "Business analysts are great borrowers of ideas," he notes. "As long as there's innovation in biology, the business world is going to watch that and see if any of the conceptual structures apply to them as well."

This article was originally published in the January 1999 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Flash Forward.