If we journeyed back over 15,000 years into the Ice Age, the world would be awash with hundreds of weird and wonderful species. Some we would recognize from today, yet many would be unfamiliar to even the most hardened traveler. Over the next 5,000 years, the world and its inhabitants faced dramatic change and a significant challenge to survive and flourish. Global temperatures started to rise, as both the Earth and its atmosphere began to change. The human population started to boom, yet the Woolly Mammoth, amongst other species, would vanish altogether and be confined to the pages of history books.
As Darwin eloquently demonstrated, it wasn’t the intelligence or physical strength of a species that predicted its survival. Instead, it was those species that best adapted to changes in their immediate surroundings that ultimately survived. In contrast, those that failed to adapt fizzled into extinction. While Darwin popularized the science of adaptability, its meaning today goes beyond survival. In this white paper we will explore some of the most up-to-date thinking in this area and outline some of the ways in which Spotlight may open conversations for the development of adaptability.
In what became his ground-breaking work, On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin laid out the foundations of his theory of evolution, as he sought to explain how certain species survived and multiplied, while others perished into extinction.
Adaptability is the capacity to spot a changing context and shift our behaviors or mindset to achieve a goal.
