They are doing batesian mimicry... dear HR

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Batesian mimicry is not only prevalent in animal world but also in many corporate, these days.  Batesian is defined as the adaptation of a harmless animal to appear like another harmful species in order to gain the advantage of predators' avoidance.  The best examples is the Scarlet king snake which is strictly non poisonous, appears similar to the deadly poisonous Eastern coral snake.  Because of the appearance similarity, the predators easily move away from the Scarlet king snake thinking it to be Eastern coral snake.

                                                       

Batesian mimicry is extremely common in most corporate and that can be seen among people especially during annual review meetings.  The R&D scientists would engage in presenting cost details and marketing USP’s of the product that they have invented/formulated or made than telling about the ‘science’ of the same.  Interestingly the people from the marketing function would resort to speak a lot about the ‘science’ and how such science was possible in the making of the product etc.    Who should speak and know what, no one cares.

 

The top management always loudly applauds the R&D scientists who speak a lot about marketing stuff than science and the marketing guys who speak science a lot than marketing.   The top management believes that the R&D scientists must have business vision while doing research.  To do good research, adequate scientific knowledge is inevitable.  But in the process, all ‘half baked’ research outputs are hyped and highlighted as great innovations and inventions by the R & D people.  The corporate that are run as ‘single man’s corporate’ are known to make such mistake.

 

As a result, many trivial findings are described as great inventions and are filed for patent and many ‘copy cat’ products are launched in the market.  The point is not that the R&D people should not speak about how to market the invention or how it would serve humanity, but the scientists who speak only about marketing and know nothing or little about science is dangerous. 

 

Naturally, when sales knowledge is appreciated in a scientist, they love to display only that and never care to develop knowledge in science.    Progressively, such corporate will loose charm and relevance.   If  the corporate leaders learn about Batesian mimicry, will understand that although the Scarlet king snake may appear like Eastern coral snake, but is non poisonous and are not the same. 

 

A scientist speak about marketing or a marketing person speak about science is fine but one cannot replace the other.  People should carry their domain knowledge regularly updated. 

 

The corporate leadership is only responsible for the above deterioration or degeneration values.   Appreciate the additional/desired qualities of people but check and validate their ‘core competency’.  By risking the core competency, if the desired qualities are recognized, originality, novelty and creativity would disappear sooner or later.  Perhaps, they would have filed several patents but with no usability.

 

Dr S Ranganathan, ClinRise Derma Pvt., Ltd., Chennai

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