Stalling planes and unemployed people have a solution: look downwards!

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 85

The software on modern commercial planes is designed to avoid "stall" at all costs: once a plane stalls, it becomes difficult to control and starts dropping like a brick or spinning towards the ground. The two recent Boeing 737 Max crashes are an unfortunate corollary of having systems so heavily focused on preventing stall. 

In human careers, you can also see this (almost deadly) effect of stall. Once someone becomes long-term unemployed, they can hardly ever recover and start work again. This also applies to people who lose their job at an advanced or pre-retirement age: they struggle to get another job.

The textbook solution to overcoming stall is to lower the nose of the plane down towards the ground to regain speed. The solution for coming out of unemployment is similar: stop looking up towards glamorous job opportunities and accept any "down-to-earth" job offer that comes your way.

Plane in deep stall (Source: Wikipedia)

Megalodon was driven to extinction by giant white sharks; Airbus A380 to be phased out in favour of A350

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 76.

The prehistoric giant shark Megalodon may have been brought to extinction by the rise of its smaller cousin, the great white shark, some 6 to 4 million years ago, a new study claims.

On the same day, European plane maker Airbus announced it would stop production of the Airbus A380 superjumbo in 2021 because of lack of new orders and would focus instead on the smaller A350 and A330 models.

A smaller beast often happens to upend a bigger one in a typical David-and-Goliath fashion. However, extinction does not have to be brought about only by your own cousins: a giant can be outcompeted by species farther removed, like a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

Fossilised Megalodon tooth and two great white shark teeth (Source: Wikipedia)

 

Airbus A380 (Source: Wikipedia)

How to stay hidden, yet visible: lizards and private companies know the trick

Having two faces is never a bad idea in business or nature
By George ILIEV

The advantages of staying private

Companies that stay private achieve two conflicting objectives: they can be as visible as they want to their customers but can hide strategic information from their competitors. A public listing on the stock market opens up a company for scrutiny by competitors, as the regular reporting to the stock exchange will disclose competitive information and strategic moves.

Lizards playing with colour

The male Iberian emerald lizard achieves the same double effect with the colouration of its head, according to recent research reported by The Economist. The bright blue colouring is iridescent: 

- when seen from above (by a predator bird) it reflects the surrounding landscape and blends in with the environment;

- when seen from ground level (by other lizards), the blue stands out against the landscape, potentially attracting mating partners.

(Photo: Iberian emerald lizard. Source: Wikipedia)

Aircraft privacy intrusion

In a starkly competitive move, Boeing bought 17 new Airbus planes from Singapore Airlines in 1999 in order to replace the Airbus batch with Boeing planes and keep the Singaporean flag carrier a loyal Boeing customer. In addition to getting the planes delivered (to be resold to other airlines), Boeing also received all the technical documentation that goes with an Airbus plane, thus gaining competitive intelligence directly from the horse's mouth. 

Competitors posing as customers to gain insight into their rival's business are not a new phenomenon. However, hawks have not yet cottoned on that they need to start hunting from ground level to catch a male Iberian lizard.

Further reading

The topic of how and why animals and companies operate in stealth mode is covered in my June 2014 blog post:

Stealth mode among companies and animals: Crickets and spiders learn to lie low 

(Crickets give up chirping, spiders disguise as bird poo, companies slip under the radar to avoid corporate predators.)