3D ocean resembles B2C world in resource availability, allowing structures to reach larger size
George ILIEV
(Giant sting ray and whale shark in the Georgia Aquarium, Atlanta, 2010)
On the one side we have the B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) corporate models. On the other we have a bunch of animals that live in 2D habitats (e.g. the savanna) or in a 3D environment (e.g. the ocean). What do these spatial structures of the business and the animal world have in common? It appears that environments with more dimensions are able to produce more resources, which allows their user/eater to grow bigger.
Paradoxically, blue whales grow so big by feeding on the tiniest of creatures: krill. UCLA research published in Nature last May shows that this contradiction can be resolved when taking into account the 3D world in which whales live: in the 3D ocean there is food in any single direction, while in the 2D world of the savanna the food is scattered only in a flat plane, so it is much harder to find. (http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/ucla-life-scientists-view-biodiversity-234522.aspx)
Taking these findings into the business world requires one small step. Could individual consumers be the krill, scattered in a 3D world of multiple levels of income and spending? Could business customers assume the role of the larger animals on the savanna, living in a much flatter world? And if so, could the 3D world inhabited by B2C companies provide the explanation why the Walmarts, the Toyotas and the Apples are the biggest corporations in the world (in revenue or market capitalisation, outside of the oil industry)?
Even the oil giants can roughly fit in this picture as they inhabit a 2.5-dimensional world, which is possibly the best of both worlds: their oil exploration and extraction divisions operate in a fairly flat B2B world, while their downstream refining divisions are immersed in the 3D world of the consumers. I cannot even think of an animal adapted so well to exploit the abundance of nature. Might the oil giants have outpaced evolution or has evolution possibly condemned such rapacious creatures to the geological record?
Giant sting ray, whale shark and beluga whale
The Georgia Aquarium (Atlanta), 2010
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ReplyDeleteIn response to oral feedback I have received on my post: Clearly there are small players in the B2C market just as there are small predators in the 3D ocean. And clearly some B2C companies are smaller than B2B companies, just as the salmon is smaller than the lion. The point of the discussion is not to try to prove that the environment determines the size of all species - this would be plainly false. The point is to show that different environments set different limitations on the maximum size. The 3D ocean and the B2C market do not impose as strict constraints on size as the 2D savanna and the B2B market do - and the reason for that is the relatively more uniformly distributed food/customers found in the ocean and the B2C market.
DeleteHowever, in all environments the more uniform the distribution of resources is, the bigger the size of the players. Thus, abundant and widespread grass and leaves allow the elephant to grow so big despite the low calorie content of this food. In the same way the large number of grocery shoppers allows Walmart to become a giant. The counter-example would be the lion and defence contractors, for both of which the supply of resources is lumpy. The infrequent killing of prey and the cyclical awarding of government defence contracts (e.g. submarine purchases) does not allow these two fauna/business representatives to outgrow their counterparts who feed or do business much more regularly.
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