When Dinosaur Companies Ruled the World...
Author: Christian Kromme

When Dinosaur Companies Ruled the World...

In January 1905, thirty-six packing cases containing a very precious cargo indeed arrived at a London museum. They would go on to cause quite a stir. In the boxes were casts of bones found in Wyoming, USA, when a railway was being laid, and these were billed at the time as belonging to the ‘Most Colossal Animal Ever on Earth’. The bones were owned by the nineteenth century industrialist and railway tycoon Andrew Carnegie. So popular was the idea of a massive animal that lived around 150 million years ago that Carnegie had casts made of the bones so that sets of bones could be gifted to favoured institutions around the world. He gifted a full set of casts of the Diplodocus bones to the London Natural History Museum.

The replica bones of Diplodocus Carnegie were unveiled to the public on 12 May 1905, and wowed audiences. The skeleton became a centrepiece of the museum and over 100 years later, Dippy (as he came to be known) holds pride of place in the hearts of millions. He has even been known to go on tour!

No alt text provided for this image

Credits: Carneggie Museum of Natural History

But here’s the thing about Dippy: he may be impressive, he may be big, but he’s notoriously difficult to move. It’s a dinosaur trait. Being difficult to shift is a trait that many of our institutions share. Dinosaurs and institutions mirror each other in so many ways. They grew to a size for a good reason – the need for something big and stable was there, and the conditions to get to a massive size were right at the time of growth. And size equals stability, doesn’t it? Well, yes, until conditions change. When that happens, size becomes a problem instead of a solution.

Education for something that no longer exists

For decades, the industrialised parts of the world created a level of stability for big chunks of the population. In fact, the whole industrial and commercial model that we educate our kids in preparation for was built on the assumptions of big companies, stable jobs, big governments and long-term security. But it’s not working out like that, is it?

In the past, we could educate our kids to be ready for a job with a large organisation or inside our governments, safe in the knowledge that they had a job for life if they wanted it. Their needs would be taken care of and life would be stable and predictable, and when they had done their time, they would be able to retire comfortably, knowing that the wealth they had generated during their lifetime would be paid back throughout their retirement.

But it’s not turning out that way. We are educating people for something that no longer exists. And yet if we look back to the dinosaurs, those big lumbering beasts that fascinate us so much, we can learn a lot about our organisations, the job market, how we need to educate the next generation and how things are going to progress. You may even spot multiple opportunities for new ways to do business too . . .

Similarity dinosaurs vs. big companies

So let’s compare the (often struggling) dinosaur companies with the real ones that roamed around our planet years ago – a useful thing to do because they have more in common with what’s going on now that you might first think.

It’s easy to think of dinosaurs as a short-lived group of creatures, but in fact they were incredibly successful for millions of years. Our corporations haven’t lasted that long, but there are common threads and by looking at some of the compatibles you can learn a great deal and use that knowledge to see where things are going inside your own industry. Are you in a progressive business? Are you educating yourself and your children in a way that will help them survive in the future? Are you geared up for success, or extinction?

The dinosaurs had a very stable life for a long time. They didn’t have to do much other than eat and move around slowly. There was plenty of space on the planet so there wasn’t a great deal of competition for food, so they could eat all they wanted. That’s why they were able to grow so big. Their only limits were the physical limits of gravity, bone density, and the need to move around to escape threats or chomp on the next tree.

For millions of years the earth was a pretty stable place for them to develop. Their size will have made it hard to move quickly because it would have taken massive amounts of energy to do that. It’s like that for many of the long-established big companies of today. Fast movement and sudden adaptation isn’t easy when you reach a large size. Change was slow, adaptation could take as long as it needed to, and things weren’t all that difficult. All that’s fine until something hits out of the blue – like a meteor (or the internet).

Meteor Alert!

Then, out of the blue, in one day, everything changed. It probably could be seen from a long way away. Only the most agile got out of the way in time to survive. Some of the smaller ones far away from the epicentre found shelter because they were able to move quickly and find shelter; they adapted quickly (and were the ancestors to our modern birds).

No alt text provided for this image

That was around 66 million years ago, but the lessons still stand. Get too big, get too complacent, and something will eventually explode or come out of the blue and there won’t be time to react and survive.

For the last couple of centuries, our world has been dominated by wealthy power bases of some description, either multinational corporations, governments, large power-based families, or religious institutions. All of these have dinosaur characteristics: they are slow to adapt and change, too big to move quickly, and have gotten used to getting their energy from a reliable and easy-to-access source, rather like their prehistoric counterparts! For the sake of shorthand, let’s refer to the group as multinationals for now.

It makes perfect economic sense why they behaved the way they did, and how they came to get big and slow. Life was reliable and slow, and they only used valuable energy when things got tough. Moving quickly gets tough when you are so big.

Smaller businesses could adapt and evolve

The multinationals’ meteor came from cyberspace. And, like all things sudden, its rise was exponential and they just didn’t see it coming. Within a few short years, advertising changed, you didn’t need a massive film crew to create an advert anymore; you only needed an HD smartphone. You didn’t need a big advertising agency to come up with creative ideas; you could have an idea and then film it and get it on TV or a platform like YouTube or Vimeo in a matter of hours. Smaller businesses could adapt and evolve, but the dinosaurs struggled to change fast enough. In the gap that was left, small companies came up with new ideas faster than the dinosaur companies thought possible. Now, we are all linked through our smartphones. We all have access to suppliers from all over the world. Today almost anyone can produce a product, think of a transformational idea and get it funded, develop an app, and reach a market on the other side of the planet. Dinosaurs can do so too – they still have a level of power and wealth – but things have changed so fast that they dinosaurs can’t keep up and many of them live in fear.

There are some massive companies who don’t fit into the dinosaur category, but if you look at them more closely you suddenly realise that their size hides their history. These companies (like Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon) have mammal like characteristics, they started small, grew quickly, and were themselves based on disruptive ideas and technologies. They might be big, but they place high value on culture, innovation, flexibility, and creative thinking. 

No alt text provided for this image

Example of companies with new ideas. Credits: Mondaynote

Evolve or die

In nature, there is a rule: evolve or die. Organisations and organisms have many things in common, and the same evolutionary rules apply. So will dinosaur companies be extinct, just like the real dinosaurs in the massive extinction event 66 million years ago? Yes, unfortunately, most of them won't survive (in my opinion). Dinosaur companies are too big, too slow and too lazy. For big dinosaurs it is tough to adapt, it is almost impossible to change their DNA (DNA = company culture) to become more adaptable and increase their survival rate. So what should these dinosaur companies do?

Well, I believe the best thing they can do is create offspring that is more adaptable to the new exponential moving world. Offspring that is more mammal-like, more social and agile. In other words, dinosaur companies should create startups with a highly social and agile culture. In my opinion, this is the only way to maintain the bloodline of these big organisations. However, be careful, beware not to overfeed the offspring. Otherwise, they become fat and lazy too, and they probably won't survive either. So keep your offspring lean and agile, challenge them with moonshot goals. 

ps: Creating offspring is a fun thing to do, so start today!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You were reading a excerpt of my best selling book Humanification, I hope you enjoyed it. If you like to discover more parallels between organisms and organisations please check: Humanification

About the author

Christian Kromme was an innovative tech-entrepreneur for 15 years until he discovered the DNA code behind disruptive innovation and how to use this to predict the next big wave of technological disruption. Now Christian is one of the most in-demand global futurist keynote speakers, speaking in front of tens of thousands of entrepreneurs, business leaders and policymakers about the radical impact of disruptive technologies on humans and organisations. Over the years Christian Kromme has inspired many companies with his keynotes and his bestseller book Humanification.

Arnold Schrijver

social experience designer 🛡️ unverifiable

6y

Nice article, Christian! Note, that it is not just the dinosaurs that live in fear. The small mammals (regular people) are increasingly worried about where tech disruptions are leading humanity too. The "Disruption is good" and "Be the disruptor" slogans hide the fact that disruption is really a negative thing. We are a species that is used to gradual 'evolution'. Disruption is the meteor that comes to the dinosaurs, yes. But there the comparison stops. If we don't steer technology and make it "Re-align to humanity's best interests" (see: humanetech.com ), then it is a new kind of vicious raptors that will rise and 'rule the world'. It is not all bad, of course. There are solutions aplenty and a lot of the tech is very positive, but we need concerted efforts of many, many people to bring out the best. At the moment tech 'is overcoming us', and we don't have control of bad, unintended consequences.

Christian Kromme

Futurist Speaker & AI Trendwatcher - Best Selling Author - Humanification- Go Digital, Stay Human - Inspired by nature

6y

#disruption #humanification #innovation #business #changemanagement

To view or add a comment, sign in

More articles by Christian Kromme

Insights from the community

Others also viewed

Explore topics