To set the stage... I'm a scientist at heart. Before I got into tech I was working on my PhD in neuroscience. So its with healthy skepticism (a valuable trait in a scientist) that I looked at Intelligent Design - a reformulation of Creationism as the explanation for how we got here and where we are going. Intelligent Design asserts that there is an "intelligent cause" -- some entity -- the Christian notion of G_d, directing the growth of organisms as opposed to the process of Natural Selection which is the key process in evolution. In natural selection, random genetic variation represent traits that are either advantageous to species survival or not. If they are advantageous they become more popular over generations.
From a marketeer's perspective, which camp do you consider yourself to be in?
Evolutionary Marketers
Well, do you believe that you should be injecting new talent into your marketing team regularly? Do you recruit or collaborate with non-marketers AND customers to produce new positioning and ideas on how to take your product to market? How much effort is given over to innovating the marketing function at your firm? Do you give your teams the opportunity to experiment and FAIL then take learnings from that failure and use it to breed success? Do you leverage scientific approaches to going to market? If so then count yourself as an Evolutionary Marketeer - you believe in growing your organization in sometimes unexpected directions and you understand that some strategies are marketing dead ends, they won't go any where.. won't "perpetuate the species: -- your firm by driving Demand.
Intelligent Design Marketers
Is your marketing "pre-ordained?" Do you have a few folks directing the overall strategy without input from either the feet on the street, your customers or those responsible for execution? Are most of your marketing efforts coming out of some sort of play-book or recipe? How often do you vary that recipe? Hardly at all? Do you rely on the same talent -- virtually all of the time? How much experimentation is there in your marketing activities? Are you quantity driven as opposed to being quantity and quality driven? If the majority of these attributes describe your marketing organization then you're an Intelligent Design Marketer.
Its a simple choice really. You can evolve and grow your marketing organization and keep your competitors off-balance. Or you can execute well for a while until your competitor evolves some survival strategy that vaults them into a position of market dominance while placing you into an evolutionary dead end. And we all know what that means... we'll be seeing your organization in the "Extinct Species Wing" of the museum.
Steve -
Don't you see just the tiniest portion of irony in the fact that you are (ever so slightly) dissing the notion that there was a creator who created creation, but at the same time following the Jewish proscription against writing the name of the creator fully (even translated to English) so as to avoid pissing off said creator? ;-)
Your friend,
- Dennis aka ברוך דניאל
Posted by: Dennis Moore | June 23, 2010 at 03:52 PM
Funny! Never thought of that but I'm comfortable with my position. I'm not in the Traditional Orthodox camp that believe that the world is 6000 years old. In fact Modern Orthodoxy has largely reconciled the notion of genesis with Natural Selection: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_views_on_evolution
I am perfectly at ease with the notion of a supreme being and evolution sitting side by side. I'm with Einstein here: "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings."
As to writing Gd or G-d, chalk that up to habit and respect.
Posted by: Steve | June 23, 2010 at 04:18 PM