“ADAPT OR PERISH.” That stark warning from H. G. Wells in his 1945 book, Mind at the End of Its Tether, remains “nature’s inexorable imperative.”
Fortunately for us, the ability to adapt to changing circumstances remains America’s greatest advantage in the global marketplace. Whether or not we maintain that advantage will determine our success or failure as an economic power, and as a country, in the two hundred fifty years ahead.
Throughout my career as an entrepreneur, investor and sports team owner, it’s become clear to me that our ability to invent things—critical as it is—is not our most important asset. Our true superpower is our ability to adapt inventions for the greatest economic and social benefit.
Henry Ford didn’t invent mass production—that was done centuries ago. However, his adaptation of this industrial technique to the manufacture of automobiles was world-changing.
While hard to believe, package delivery didn’t start with Jeff Bezos. The Persian Empire under Cyrus the Great created a sophisticated relay courier system called the “Angarium” thousands of years ago. In 1907, two American teenagers founded the American Messenger Company that evolved into UPS. The US Postal Service launched Parcel Post in 1913, enabling mail-order giants, like Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck, to serve rural America as never before. Fred Smith’s hub-and-spoke distribution system revolutionized package delivery at Federal Express, and Jeff Bezos’s Amazon reinvented logistics for the e-commerce era.
