“The environment is the design space of evolution. The market is the design space of economics.”
– Michael Shermer, The Mind of the Market
As designers, we have a tool that can help us better grasp why the design of everyday things, services, and systems sometimes flourishes and other times fails. It is a 162-year-old theory: evolution by natural selection. While traditionally applied to explain biological evolution, this theory holds significant implications for the design of products, services, and experiences. In this context, I aim to demonstrate the profound interconnectedness between these seemingly distinct concepts.
By understanding how natural selection and market-driven innovations work and mirror one another, we can tackle real-world design challenges more effectively. This understanding may also revolutionize how businesses approach innovation strategy and product design process. Realizing the core similarities between these two forms of design may also help create more sophisticated and useful design frameworks and methods, fostering better team cohesion and organization. Embracing this holistic perspective of design may help inspire and foster a new era of creativity and efficiency in shaping the products, services, and technologies of tomorrow.
R&D and Natural Selection
The primary commonality between market-driven innovation and biological evolution lies in their capacity to produce adaptive designs. To better comprehend this connection, let's first briefly go over how natural selection leads to the development of more finely-tuned forms of life.
Natural selection is a remarkable process through which the environment shapes and evolves organisms over numerous generations via selection. This process is governed by three fundamental principles:
1) Selective Advantage: Within a given environment, individual organisms exhibit varying degrees of adaptability. Those that are better-suited to their surroundings have higher survival and reproduction rates.
2) Variation: Offspring inherently vary to some degree from their parents.
3) Replication: Parents pass down genes and traits to their offspring, ensuring the continuity of specific genetic features through generations.
For example, consider a scenario where a parent's offspring acquires a gene that introduces a new feature to the organism's design, making it slightly better adapted to its environment (including other organisms, objects, and climate). This phenotypic modification, such as a slighter longer beak in a bird, enhances the organism's chances of successful reproduction and, therefore, increases the gene’s chance of replication and longer beaks spreading in the population. This leads to a harmonious fit between the organism and its environment. The outcome is the appearance of intentional adaptive design in nature, driven by the mechanism of natural selection.
Similarly, Research and Development plays a crucial role in generating and refining adaptive designs, which make up the fabric of modern societies. R&D is responsible for making the things we use. Design studios and research labs strive to develop new designs that solve problems and cater to users' desires. Enterprise innovation labs and start-ups experiment tirelessly to ensure these new designs function properly in a given social and technical ecosystem, aiming to achieve what marketers call ‘product-market fit’. However, not all human-generated designs, just like their biological counterparts, are fit to the ecosystems they enter. Designs that successfully ship, out-compete, and win mean they are fit-for-purpose — that is, until new innovations that are fitter come around, forcing incumbents into retirement.
As the biologist and popular author Matt Ridley writes, “economic evolution is a process of variation and selection, just like biological evolution.” The Darwinian philosopher Daniel Dennett takes this notion further by considering evolution as an R&D process that leads to the emergence of conscious designers (us!). Dennett quips “the creativity of individual human beings can be seen to echo, at high speed and in concentrated forms, the R&D processes that created it.” However, biological and market-driven evolution don’t quite operate identically. Biological evolution is gradual, mechanistic, and operates blindly, resulting in the the plethora of life that covers Earth. On the other hand, market-driven evolution is rapid, saltatory, and conscious producing the furniture of our everyday existence. Despite their differences, both processes share the fundamental principles of variation, selection, and replication, ultimately contributing to the diversity and progress we observe in the natural and social worlds.
The striking resemblance between market-driven innovations and the works of nature becomes obvious once the connection is made explicit. Neural myelin and transistors basically solve the same design problem (i.e. amplifying electric signals). Nature installed a sonar system into bats to help them see prey at night. Engineers came up with the same technology a hundred years ago, which initially helped submarines see underwater.
Function and Purpose
Natural selection and the economy share the common feature of producing adaptive designs. These adaptive designs are selected because they imbue users or organisms with some advantage or benefit. They must be useful in some regular way by virtue of their shape and form. A more technical way of understanding a design's usefulness involves considering its functionality. When a design is functional, it means that it is adapted to its environment and has a higher likelihood of replicating. Notably, functional designs not only spread in selective environments (which they do), but non-functional designs also fail to replicate and eventually die out. They are outcompeted by more functional and fitter designs. What this amounts to is that there are good reasons that designs work or fail.
How do we determine whether organic and artificial designs are functional or not? The functionality of a design lies in its ability to achieve its ultimate purpose or aim, which can be seen as its "final cause" in Aristotelian terms. If a design achieves its final cause then it is functional, adaptive, and has a good chance of replicating in selective populations. However, it is important to acknowledge that artificial and organic designs differ radically in their ultimate aims or final causes.
Natural selection, fundamentally, fulfills its purpose by enhancing an organism's chances of reproduction. This concept aligns with the principles of evolutionary theory, which some theorists have metaphorically expressed as genes "wanting" to be passed on to the next generation above all else. In contrast, an artificial design, at its core, fulfills its purpose by providing some psychological benefit to its user.
The fundamental element that makes a biological design functional is simple: if it increases an organism's reproduction chances then it is adaptive and has a greater chance of replication. The fundamental element that makes an artificial design functional is complicated: if it satisfies a user's unmet want or need then it is adaptive and has a greater chance of replication. WIRED editor Kevin Kelly shows just how complicated user wants and needs can be when we consider what they are: “once people have met their basic needs, they tend to want medical care, transportation and communication, information, recreation, entertainment, financial and legal advice…technology has permeated eating, romance, sex, child-rearing, education, [and] death.” This list is virtually inexhaustible and changes as cultures and norms change.
A critic may argue that the history of markets presents numerous counterexamples, where products have successfully spread despite failing to fulfill a deep human need or solve an end user's problem. Don't other factors such as advertisements, current tastes, fashions, and conspicuous consumption play a significant role in the diffusion of products and services? These kinds of questions should not be dismissed and are excellently articulated by the economist John Kenneth Galbraith in his 1958 classic The Affluent Society. While addressing Galbraith's extensive criticism of market economies is beyond the scope of this article, there are essential points he fails to acknowledge.
Firstly, consumers invest considerable effort in scrutinizing and researching their purchases, and they readily abandon products that do not prove useful. Secondly, people are not as easily influenced by external forces, like marketing campaigns, as Galbraith suggests. Over time, if a new product or service fails to provide users with tangible benefits and psychological satisfaction, it will phased out by intense competitive pressures. No amount of advertisement dollars or celebrity endorsements can make a non-functional, maladaptive product succeed.
It should be emphasized that the relationship between psychological satisfaction and the spread of market-driven innovations is a probabilistic assertion, similar to how organisms replicate in nature. I am willing to concede that it is possible for the most fit products on the market to disappear for reasons that have nothing to do with fitness. Markets are wild and unruly, and there are no guarantees that the fittest innovations survive and spread. Just as a tree might fall and unexpectedly eliminate the fastest cheetah of the Serengeti before it passes along its exceptional genes, unpredicted events can alter market outcomes. Contingency upsets the purity and precision of achieving fully deterministic explanations in both the biological and economic world.
Overlap and Divergence
What should start coming into focus is where artificial and organic design overlap and diverge. In Chart 1
we see how similar they are at the macro level (both have competitive playing fields that produce adaptive designs via selection). However, as we delve into the finer details, we eventually encounter a complete divergence in what defines functionality for each kind of design. In Chart 2,
by extending the three adaptive elements that explain natural selection to the realm of market-driven innovation, we observe significant parallels except for the ultimate characteristic that gives a design its selective advantage. These abstract outlines may not capture reality in its fullness but breaking our topic down in this way serves a different end. We can conclude that the primary distinction between natural selection and the market lies in what renders the adaptive designs they both produce functional. Nature designs organisms for procreation and markets design innovations to provide psychological satisfaction.
Practical Applications
What are the practical implications of this abstract and theoretical examination of how designed things emerge in nature and markets. Below, I present three lessons designers may find useful and worthy of additional reflection. They also may help non-designers understand the significance of design in the context of business.
1) Prioritize UX.
Understanding that the ultimate end of market-driven innovations is psychological satisfaction makes technology development a moral science. Good artificial designs are inherently utilitarian due to their ability to address problems and alleviate pain. The standard by which we evaluate artificial designs should be directly linked to its capacity to maximize human experience. Therefore, before designers can determine what to design, it is crucial to understand the population they intend to serve. Despite spending nearly a decade in design, it continues to surprise me how often this stage get rushed or overlooked entirely.
The secret to a winning product or a new technology starts with understanding your intended market. To achieve this, design teams must prioritize the user experience. Start by mapping the market, segmenting the population, and analyzing what people need. Develop an empathetic concern for the challenges and discomforts facing others. Allow researchers and designers to examine customers' behavioral patterns, identify what they are looking for, and target pain points, irregularities, and inconsistencies across the entire value chain and customer journey. Irregularities and frustrations cause negative user experiences to flare up and the main responsibility of designers is to seek intelligent, technical solutions that genuinely address their concerns. The focus should not solely be on being digital-first or adopting the latest trends like AI or blockchain. These are means to a larger end. Fundamentally, technology is about enhancing experiences. Designers should adopt an moral mindset before a single line of code or CAD diagram is created.
2) Iterate and test relentlessly. Only the adaptive survive.
In contrast to natural selection, where the environment blindly selects, the market relies on conscious users and consumers to do the choosing. If users and consumers do the selecting then bringing them into the design process is an essential part of shaping and fitting the product to its intended market. And this is exactly what human-centered design professions do.
Suppose you were to design a superorganism. Understanding the environment the organism would inhabit becomes paramount for creating a well-designed organism. How else would you know to make gills or lungs, wings or hands? Similarly, designing products and services requires in-depth knowledge of the intended environment. It is virtually impossible for anyone to predict all the diverse interactions and issues that may arise when actual end-users start using a new piece of technology. Therefore, it becomes imperative to test new prototypes in simulated environments before releasing them to the market. Bringing the end-users into the development process and adjusting designs based on observations and feedback fosters antifragile designs, capable of withstanding stress and contingencies in the real world. Achieving product-market fit can't truly happen unless the market is brought into the product design process. This is how designs become functional and adaptive and nature teaches us that only the adaptive survive.
3) A theory of design is within reach.
In the past, it was often argued that the intricacies of the biological world were beyond the grasp of science. Nature seemed exceptionally well-designed to be the product of any process that humans could work out. Similarly, skeptics today claim that the market-driven innovation process is enigmatic because we cannot predict the next groundbreaking technology or best-selling product as we do the phases of the moon.
However, the inability to make precise predictions does not render further theorizing and exploration futile. Before Darwin's On the Origin of Species, the prevailing belief among educated people was that complex design in nature was an elaborate phenomenon attributed to a divine artificer. Kant famously remarked that there would never be a Newton of the blade of grass. Yet, the success of evolution by natural selection proved them wrong. This history should inspire skeptics to consider the attainability of a systematic theory of artificial design.
Embracing more theory in research, design, and development can demystify innovation strategy, underscore the business value of fields like User Experience (UX), and yield ROI justifications that would enable additional design support. It can facilitate the integration of creative teams and lead to more well-designed products, ultimately enhancing societies by making them happier, healthier, greener, and more prosperous.
David Hume, the great Scottish empiricist, once noted that “the works of nature bear a great analogy to the productions of art is evident.” By art, Hume meant man-made objects like tables and chairs, surfboards, and software. But the works of nature and the productions of art, as we have just explored, bear more than just a great analogy. Both are the outputs of complex adaptive systems and their success or failure hinges on how effectively they function and serve their ultimate ends. While this principle is well understood in biology, it is often overlooked in the development of man-made objects. Designers can learn much from nature and the fruits that she bears.
References:
Kevin Kelly, What Technology Wants
Michael Shermer, The Mind of the Market
Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker
David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
Daniel Dennett, From Bacteria to Bach and Back
Matt Ridley, The Evolution of Everything
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society
*Special thanks to Robert Kurzban, PhD for taking the time to provide many great notes on an early draft.