Dodo Bird as a Lesson for Business Owners
By Handzalah / Black Swan Research 1 April 2026, 1:54am MYT
The picture above depicts a dodo bird and its inevitable fate. The black swans are just symbolism. The picture was generated by AI.
a dodo bird story
In a paper by Nathan Nunn, he explains how a dodo bird, known for its well optimized body for the system led to its extinction. The bird lived on the Island of Mauritius. It had no predators therefore they had not developed strategies on how to protect themselves and their eggs. The dodo birds had no ability to fly and there was really no additional benefit to flight. They had great sense of smell. Overall, in the current environment they were fully optimized and streamlined. However, after humans had settled into the island and brought in predators, the dodo bird were defenseless and soon got extinct. The changing environment had led to their extinction despite having a well optimized but non-adaptive features.
the Optimization fallacy: how optimizing for present kills the future
Similar to the story of the dodo bird, businesses face the same fate. In an ever-changing capitalist environment, businesses may choose to optimize and become very efficient for their current environment or remain flexible and adaptive to the current environment. The latter one serves as a better option due to its resistance in the dependency on unchanged environment. In the capitalist environment we live in, it is imprudent to assume that our environment will remain constant. Knowing this, businesses should adapt to better position themselves to weather the storm of capitalist disruption. Blockbuster was a giant in the business of renting videos. They had thousands of retail outlets and their presence made them efficient for their environment. Traffic of customers came day after day. They were well optimized for their environment at the time. However, as the shift of customer preference to digital streaming advances, they were reluctant to change their business model to adapt to a new environment. There are many other examples on similar events, where dependency on the current environment and lack of adaptiveness led to the demise of a business.
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