Plenty or Scarcity Breed Success – Corporate vs. Nature

Plenty or scarcity has caused the evolution of various species on earth? Certainly the scarcity would have been the most probable cause. But definitely, plenty also would have caused evolution and diversity of various species. General belief is that scarcity alone would cause competition and hence it would favour evolution and further speciation. But abundance of resource does cause problems. Abundance always favour over utilization, misuse and abuse of the resource.

Nature has shown the best ways for how the resource, opportunity and the time must be used and utilized. The modern corporate should learn the art of utilizing and optimizing the opportunity instead of weighing or validating the limitations and or the abundance of the opportunity. The employees must be trained to be creative at the intellect level and should come out with newer ideas and possibilities especially when the organization faces the situation of adversity.

The very common and customary grievance the marketing department in most corporate used to make is that the annual expenditure for advertisement and or the market spent is far too low than the competitor organization. They often cite the above reason to be the major cause for the business not growing / happening.

The story of R&D scientists will be in no way different from their counter parts in marketing department. The scientists in general in most corporate would say that the R&D facility that they have do not have adequate infrastructure to support good/great research.

The story of every other department in most corporate will be no way different from the above. Everyone will be complaining about what is not there or available and would cite such limiting factor the main reason for their poor performance.

The corporate and its employees must know that limitation/scarcity is also one of the best resources and with the above resource they can make wonders. Some recent study findings suggest that bi-pedalism in man would have happened from grass land or from open lands life during prehistoric times. When man moved to the open land from deep jungle for his/her protection, his/her vulnerability would have grown several folds in open land. In the open land, his protection was limited as he may not have found much scope to hide nor he could run fast and escape. To ensure his protection only, the evolution of brain power in man would have grown in geometric proportion or in limitless extent. Had there been no grasslands or open lands the possibility of man migrating to the open land from deep jungle would not have happened and perhaps he would have even today continued his hide and seek game in deep jungle.

Man moved from plenty to scarcity (from deep jungle to open land), evolution has indeed helped him in the best possible way. The corporate must learn the fact that any resource crunch or similar challenges, they should consider as best opportunity to invent newer things. Only the need and necessity favour invention and diverse leadership possibilities. When people spent their entire energy and capability in grieving about the limitations and scarcity, invention possibility would naturally decline, regress and may even disappear. This is one of the major problems killing many corporate these days.

Corporate also should remember that having plenty of opportunity or resources also pose equal threat. Misuse and abuse often happen when the opportunity or resource is plenty. From the employees’ point of view, they should remember that when the organization has plenty of resources, they can hire talents at high cost. When opportunity is plenty, recognition for the business success often will goes to the opportunity not for your effort or innovation. Remember, when there is scarcity for resource or opportunity, your have job security.

Dr S Ranganathan