JANG Dayk

Distinguished Professor, Gacheon Startup College / CEO, Transverse Inc.

JANG Dayk
Times of the Remarks 2024. 11. 12. 15:25-15:40
Title Research Findings 3 - Companies that Go beyond Mere Survival: Ultra-survival and Evolvability

What is the relationship between the evolution of technology and human nature? What does a business look like when it reflects human nature, and what would an organization look like if it was imbued with humanity? Professor JANG Dayk is a philosopher of science who has investigated the nature and future of science and technology within Korean society, as well as an evolutionary scientist who has researched the evolution of life and the sociality of humans, with such well-known publications as Darwin’s Table, Ultrasocial, and The Radius of Empathy. For the last two years, as the inaugural Dean of Gachon Startup College, he has been devoted to the work of creating a college startup community where students can learn and experience what it means to transform one’s life “for the nth time” through the development of an entrepreneurial spirit. While on the faculty at Seoul National University, Professor Jang started a company called Transverse, which, now in its fourth year, has given him a firsthand appreciation of how difficult it is to succeed as a startup. However, guided by his belief that the essence of business is to be able to awaken empathy in others, he has persevered and continues to learn and teach from experience. As a columnist who has been published in the Kyunghyang Shinmun, Joongang Ilbo, and Chosun Ilbo, Professor Jang has written across a range of disciplines while always striving to make evidence the basis of his writing. He has continuously broadened his interests from mechanical engineering to philosophy of science, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, primatology, and cognitive science, in that order, with this ever-growing breadth of interests leading him ultimately to the world of business. As to how and to what extent his areas of focus will continue to evolve, he doesn’t know himself.


[Session Title and Description]

Companies that Go beyond Mere Survival: Ultra-survival and Evolvability

Every year, the American business magazine Fortune announces its list of the top 500 global companies. If this list is any indication, no company is eternal. Over just the last fifty years, many companies who were once the highest-valued in the Fortune rankings have been pushed off the list, with some even going bankrupt. Meanwhile, of the countless startups that are born everyday around the world, less than 50% survive beyond their fifth year. In short, the majority of companies that are started eventually die. Observing the rise and fall of companies, we are prompted to consider what characteristics or criteria determine whether a company survives or disappears. Take this line of questioning further, and we can ask, what characteristics do “ultra-survival” companies, who have survived for hundreds of years, have in common? Traditionally, such questions have been explored mostly in the fields of business administration or economics. But there are new insights and findings to be gained concerning these questions in the four-billion-year history of life, and the mechanisms of survival and annihilation observable throughout. This is because there is sufficient evidence to suggest that these two worlds (the world of biology and the world of companies) operate on the same principles of evolution. In this context, this session focuses on differences on “evolvability” as manifested over four billion years of life on earth to discover what attributes enable a company to have high evolvability and thereby continue in a state of ultra-survival. What organizational structures and technology systems show high evolvability, and what kinds of laws, regulations, leadership, and philosophy can strengthen a company’s evolvability?