Mangrove Ecosystem and Corporate Adaptation

The word 'adaptation' got into our life very deep ever since a very relevant biological definition was given to the term by Charles Darwin. Adaptation is essential for success. But success always doesn't come with adaptation alone. Acceptance is yet another process that should precede adaptation.

In the composite business ecosystem, adaptation to the newer market realities is although inevitable, accepting some of the hard realities is equally important. Adaptation always should have long term interest in mind. Adaptation for short term results is very detrimental to the company in long run. Inevitability of the adaptation also corporate should verify. Any organization refuse to adapt become vestigial in due course of time.

A parallel from nature can be drawn to explain the process of acceptance and adaptation. In the course of evolution, when certain plants were pushed to (or would have selected to) live in saline ecosystem. Acceptance of the reality of the saline ecosystem would have appeared first in these plant communities. The selection pressure would have given several choices to these plants as to adopt, chose different ecosystem or become extinct. How many plants would have followed any of these three choices is not known. However, the adaptation being a very long and progressive process, the changes/adaptation happened in these plants have a very long term implications.

Specialized phototrophic roots to excrete the salts, branched roots to help the plants to hold onto loose soil and parental care (an uncommon phenomena among plants) of baby plants until they develop roots and ready to shoot to soil are some of the adaptations in mangrove plants for the continued existence in the ecosystem.

Adaptations of plants in the nature, especially the mangrove plants or plants live in saline ecosystem should be taken as the best model by the modern corporate.

The larger message for the corporate is that before they gallop into an adaptation mode should wait and watch the change, should try to understand the change process, accept the change process and then switch to an adaptation mode. What is inevitable for survival can become fatal and detrimental if the cause and consequence are not understood well. Change (adaptation) for the sake of change is dangerous and change (adaptation) for the sake of need and necessarily should be the cause and the purpose said Dr Ranganathan, Director of ClinRise Derma Pvt., Ltd., Chennai in a meeting.