What businesses can learn from David Attenborough's Galapagos trip?

“Adaptation is the heart and soul of evolution.”

— Niles Eldredge

A few weeks ago, I came across (our beloved) David Attenborough’s Galapagos 3-episode documentary. I was fascinated by it. It also reminded me of a talk I gave back in 2012 - 2013 and an article I wrote a year ago. Both talked about what the evolution theory tells us about how people from different countries use mobile phones and why certain payment methods work in one country but not in others.

David Attenborough’s Galapagos Documentary [Photos credit: Sky]

The Galápagos islands

The Galápagos islands, situated near the equator off of South America with more than 500 miles from the coast of mainland Ecuador, were (and still are) the best place in the world to study evidence of evolution by natural selection.

This is because: The islands (separated from one another by distance, deep water and strong tides) not only isolate the newcomers but also prevent plants and animals from breeding with others of their kind that may have colonised other shores. Various species were washed away from land and drifted to an island subtly different from the habitat it left behind. From the moment of separation, the island population is treading a unique evolutionary pathway. With no place else to go, the Galápagos’ denizens adapted to conditions unique to their new homes.

Not just gene and physical features

Adaptation and evolution don’t happen only on the physical features of a species, but also their behaviours. Take the Galápagos penguins as an example.

The closest living relative of the Galápagos penguin is the Magellanic Penguin, native to southern Chile. It was believed that that ages ago, some penguins were carried north and west from southern Chile by a storm or ocean currents and arrived in Galápagos. Somehow, the cold-weather birds survived and multiplied.

The Galápagos penguins have lost some of their fat (which they no longer needed living in a warmer environment) and evolved to become smaller than most other penguins as a tactic that helps it keep cool. They also have hairless spots on their cheeks which help releasing heat.

Galápagos Penguin [Photo credit: Derek Keats on Flickr]

The adaptations are not just on their physical appearance. They have also developed behavioural adaptations that help them keep cool. These include standing with flippers extended to aid heat loss, as well as panting and seeking shade. They can swim quicker than other penguins, often reaching speeds up to 15 miles per hour underwater. They also developed a way to cool off, releasing heat through their webbed feet. Hence, they are often seen to shade their feet with their bellies.

Another example includes the unique feeding habits of the Galapagos Racer snake in Fernandina Island (the youngest island in the Galapagos archipelago). Instead of eating lava lizards, little iguanas, rodents and bugs, these marine snakes would stay on the rocky protuberance on a lava ledge, crane its neck out over the ocean itself and strike quickly sideways to ‘fish’ for a four-eyed blenny fish.

One adaptation in a species sometimes also opens the door to another adaptation in a different species, through time and space.

The ‘evolution’ of your global customers

What does the evolution theory have to do with your global customers and business? 

We, human, all belong to one species - Homo sapiens. As in all species, there is variation among individual human beings, for example, our physical appearance from size and shape to skin tone and eye colour.

Physical adaptations

Let’s talk about human structural adaptations where we can see certain strong traits from people in one country to another. Humans have adapted to differences, for instance, in climate, altitude and resource availability. Our body, gene and physical features adapt throughout centuries mostly depending on the environment our ancestors were in.

Take skin tone as an example, there is overwhelming scientific evidence that dark skin evolved as a protection against the effect of UV radiation. Skin pigmentation is an evolutionary adaptation to the various UV radiation levels around the world. The distribution of light-skinned populations is highly correlated with the low ultraviolet radiation levels of the regions inhabited by them. Historically, light-skinned populations almost exclusively lived far from the equator, in high latitude areas with low sunlight intensity.

You might ask, how do these physical differences of your global customers impact your business decisions when aiming to provide a good customer experience for them? It can be at different levels. Let’s start with physical products that you are offering in different countries. 

Have you consider that an ergonomically, comfortable sofa or chair you have designed for your Western customers might not stay true anymore for your Asian customers (who might have a different body size, body proportions, leg-to-body ratio, etc)? Or when it comes to your shop display, it might make sense to showcase your products at lower heights for some countries considering that on average, your key customers in those countries are shorter than the others? This is exactly what IKEA in India did where their cabinets and countertops come at lower heights because India women tend to be shorter than Europeans and Americans.

Once I was doing some research for Clarks in China. When observing and talking to customers and salesperson at their stores in Shanghai, I learnt that as much as the Chinese parents love the design and high durability of Clarks’ shoes, they found that their babies and toddlers’ feet often cannot fit into these shoes (with 8 out of 10 Chinese parents I talked to brought up the same issue). Clarks cares a lot about kids’ feet growth and was a strong advocate for “measuring before buy”. They measure the width and length of a kids’ feet. But, what they might have missed is the ‘thickness’ of their feet (the instep half-round measurement). The Chinese parents commented that despite having the correct width and length, with their babies having ‘thicker’ feet than Clarks anticipated, buying Clarks shoes for their babies and toddlers was not an option. Although I can’t find any research or data highlighting how such such structural and physical adaptations happen for Chinese (or possibly Asians’) babies, the issue remained valid and apparent. Such insights would likely only to be discovered through research.

I can only see the tip of my head in a mirror at a cafe in Stockholm, Sweden. Swedish people are an average 172.71cm (5 feet 7.99 inches) tall. My height - 152cm.

Behavioural and attitudinal adaptations 

Understanding the physical and structural differences of your global customers could help define some of your design decisions and business strategies. 

The behavioural and attitudinal adaptations of people in different countries play an even stronger role when it comes to providing the right products, services and experiences for your global customers and markets.

Your customers in each country have a unique culture, environments and living context (which are shaped by their history, traditions, customs, religions, geography, political influences, technology evolvement and so on).

What makes such behavioural and attitudinal adaptations particularly complicated is that, they are often not only influenced by one single element but a combination of many aspects. For example, two countries might share one of the elements (e.g. they might speak the same language), but with other aspects coming into play, it makes each unique from one another. People in different countries and context settings would adapt either to survive or strive.

The uniqueness can be seen in many forms. For example, their behaviours when buying a household item, attitudes towards accessing digital content illegally, their needs to involve their family friends when deciding which universities and courses to go for, their financial motivations, their beliefs in health and social care, their preferences when it comes to travel experience, their expectations toward their the digital environment and so on.

In some cases, country A might share the same attitude towards one aspect (e.g. aspect x) as country B, but both might have a completely different attitude towards other aspects (e.g. aspect y). At the same time, country A and country C might have a more similar attitude on aspect y. 

Therefore, in the business context, sometimes it is appropriate to group some countries, for example, when it comes to grocery shopping behaviours but not when it is about their mentality towards insurance.

Extinctions

Just like species extinctions happen all the time, these aspects (e.g. behaviours, attitudes, etc) could die out too if they are no longer relevant or applicable to their environment. 

Extinction can occur as a result of natural selection. Species (e.g. animals and plants) poorly adapted to their environment may not survive and reproduce. Their species populations will decline and they may eventually become extinct and be replaced by species which are better suited to the environment.

Human, as a species, is not likely to extinct (at least not anytime soon). But our culture, beliefs, behaviours, languages and customs can extinct, although some might take longer than others to die off.

Your customers in different countries would evolve based on the changes around them. Some of their behaviours might take longer to disappear, whilst some new ones might emerge quicker than expected. But very often the deeper levels of underlying cultural components and factors, as well as the characteristics of a society (including history, economic situation, environment) are unlikely to change across centuries. These are ones you might want to focus on to ensure your products and services are still relevant to your customers in different countries, as described in this article .

What does it mean to your business?

Top three takeaways (note that they are closely interrelated):

• Never assume that your customers in different countries are the same, want the same thing and behave the same way

• One solution, experience, technology or platform which work perfectly well for one country might not necessarily work for other countries (as we talked about in this article about payment methods)

• Have a holistic approach towards your understanding of your global customers and setting your global strategies. For example, if you want to create a useful, applicable and sustainable healthcare solution for the locals in Kenya and neighbouring Africa countries, don’t just learn about their living and social conditions, but also how their medical system currently works, their technology availability and limitations, their tradition and beliefs, their history which shape how they see and talk about certain health conditions and diseases, and so on - the full picture and complete ecosystem

How does evolution happen

The greatest insight in the history of biology:

“Living things survive only if they can master their habitat; those that are best adapted to a new environment will reproduce and pass on their adaptations.”

Human is one of the most adaptive species, irrespective of the location, environment and circumstances we are in. The adaptations shape who we are, how we behave, what we need, how we think in different countries.

When you are designing products and services for your customers in different countries, defining how best to communicate with them or deciding what digital solutions to offer to them, consider the adaptations that your global customers have made to survive and thrive and most importantly how those adaptations shape the experience they need, desire and expect from you.

Look out for their niches and don’t forget to also find your (and business’) niche so you can survive and thrive together with your global customers!