Digital Darwinism: Meaning, Examples and Drivers – GKToday

First Published: September 9, 2016 | Last Updated:September 9, 2016

When a BJP MP Tarun Vijay urged patriotic Indians to use the Bhuvan mapping software developed by ISRO rather than Google Maps; an article was published in financial express which said pleading patriotism would not work for Bhuvan in this era of Digital Darwinism. The concept of Digital Darwinism was given by Brian Solis. As per Solis, we all are witnessing Digital Darwinism an era when technology and society evolve faster than the ability to adapt or lead. In this era, the organizations must either adapt or die. Digital Darwinism favors those organizations that at least try to evolve to compete.

The above examples indicate that Digital Darwinism threatens most organizations in almost every industry. Because of this, businesses not only have to compete for today but also for the unforeseeable future.

Traditional Darwinism addresses biological evolution through natural selection and the ability to survive. Digital Darwinism exposes the risk for companies to be victims of the accelerating pace of digital adoption as their traditional business models fail to adapt to rapidly-changing customers needs.

Digital Darwinism also would imply digital transformation. It is the realignment of, or new investment in, technology, business models, and processes to drive new value for customers and employees to more effectively compete in an ever-changing digital economy. Change is the only thing which is constant and that holds important tagline for Digital Transformation.

Some of these technologies are as follows:

Bhuvan, developed in 2009, is a web-based GIS tool developed by ISRO. It allows users to explore 2D/3D maps, especially of India, over the web. While the software certainly entails benefits for the government such as mapping for disaster services, climate and environment, etc., the layman stands less to benefit from it. It lacks basic features like location-tracking and traffic updates which are most important for individuals today in this Digitised world. Bhuvan also is not handy when it comes to services like locating ATMs or sharing location over the internet. The only place where it trumps Google Maps is that it provides services in four Indian languages- English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu.

While the software is chiefly directed for government-use, to attract the lay user, it will have to do better than providing just location data and clearer images of rooftops, because in a free market, people will lean more towards a technology that offers a larger spectrum of uses and is widely-used already.

The best the government can do for Bhuvan is to keep adding features that excite general users and does not allow them to lean towards technologies like Google Maps.

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Digital Darwinism: Meaning, Examples and Drivers - GKToday