Guns, Germs and Steel - A Means to Success

On Friday 26th November 2010 The Times ran an article it called ‘How the Demise of the Dinosaur Tuned Mice into Mammoths’. It highlighted the adventitious events that led to the demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago (ushering in the Tertiary period, proceeding Quaternary period and preceding the Cretaceous). Essentially after a meteorite hits the earth (KT event) dinosaurs no longer fed on the vegetation. This meant that an enormous amount of resources were now available to small mammals. Mammals exploded in size and quantity. In economic geographic terms mammals simply benefitted greatly from a felicitous environmental inflection.

But this is no different for entrepreneurial species such as so-called minorities like Oprah Winfrey and Don King. These ‘EntrePredators’ were marginalised by larger prey dominating the economic landscape. The ambient environment was hostile and pickings were lean. However, Martin Luther hit America like a meteor causing the ‘Civil Rights inflection’ that changed the fortunes of many minority entrepreneurs and they grew to ‘mega fauna’ proportions.

A meteor hit the USA mid 1800s: the American Civil War, the Secondary Industrial Revolution and the US Stock market. The economic landscape changed forever. A species of EntrePredator thrived mother, as a result of the adventitious events. The roster included names like JJ Hill, John D Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie to name but a few.

And of course you have the arrival of the Altair 8080 (the first PC) in 1974 which changed the world once again. Suddenly the Tyrannosaurus Rex of technology, namely IBM, fell from its dominant position allowing smaller EntrePredators species to come out from under in the form of Bill Gates (Micro Soft) and Steve Jobs (Apple).

Gun Germs and Steel by Jarred Diamond talks about a world filled with haves and have nots.. He’s a biologist and specialist in human physiology. His book outlines his quest to find out why some races are among the haves and some are among the have nots. Diamond makes it clear it had much to do with geographic luck. This parallels with the economic ecology alluded to earlier. Take for instance the access to nutritious grasses like wheat and barley in the Fertile Crescent. This led to farming right along the east/west axis area through Eurasia. This path of farming was because of the common axis creating similar day lengths, climates, and therefore, supports the same natural life, making the axis a conduit for farming opportunity. Anyone along the axis had a great opportunity to benefit from farming. Those outside the axis had less opportunity.

At a micro level or macro ‘creature(s)’ often find themselves in ‘fortuitously’ changing times and changing environments, so well suited to their peculiarities it leads to amazing growth.

In my interview on Press TV I fought with Afshin Rattansi to extol the wisdom of the “largely discredited” Joseph Schumpeter. Great growth is preceded by great collapse. Creative Destruction (as exposed by Schumpeter) is instructive. If you want great growth look for where great desctruction has or is about to take place.

See the punch up between Ron Shillingford V Afshin Rattansi on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzseb8PXraA&feature=related