Hacking life
View from crow’s nest
Looking back
Looking forward
Vs.
Looking forward
Lessons from life about surviving
and thriving with radical change
Dr. Eric Haseltine
Bottom line
• Biology teaches deep lessons about how to prosper
when game changing events occur
• Organizations that heed these lessons will survive
discontinuities they can neither predict nor control
• Organizations that don’t, wont
Radical change
• Can’t predict or control
• Accelerating
• Makes or breaks
VS
Existence proof of solutions
• Conditions on Earth have
changed radically—many times-over last 3.5B years
• Life has thrived and survived all
of them
• Ability to change is key
Four big lessons of biology
• Change before you have to
• Change quickly when you have to
• Don’t change when you’ve got a good thing
• Change the outside when you can’t change the inside
Change before you have to
• Mutation
• Sexual reproduction
Change before you have to
Change quickly when you have to
• Obey the rules
– Homeostasis
– Learning
– Programmed death
• Bend the rules
– Epigenetic changes
• Break the rules
– Gene swapping
Don’t change when things are good
Change environment
• Modification
• Cooperation
• Creation
Change before you have to
• Mutation
• Sexual reproduction
Change quickly when you have to
• Obey the rules
– Homeostasis
– Learning
– Programmed death
Change quickly when you have to
• Bend the rules
– Epigenetic changes
• Break the rules
– Gene swapping
Don’t change when things are good
Change environment
• Modification
• Cooperation
• Creation
Key takeaways
• Thought experiments aren’t real experiments
• Changing before you have to takes courage… but it’s
actually safer than changing after you have to
• Know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know
when to walk away, know when to run
• When you don’t know what to do, do lots of things