In: Operations Management
Summarize the evaluation of adaptive strategy alternatives
Adaptation can have many colloquial meanings. We say have "adapted to a new job" or that a business will "adapt to a changing marketplace". This common use of the word denotes a change in one's individual behavior, or in a group's collective behavior, or in an institutions policies to match the requirements of a new environment.
An evolutionary adaptation is much the same as the colloquial meaning but instead of an individual or an institution adapting to circumstances it is a biological population doing the adapting.
Evaluation in general is a change in the heritable characteristics present in a population. It may be produced by natural selection, artificial selection, genetic drift , mutation pressure, or migration.
Adaptive evaluation refers to evolutionary changes that are adaptive to the given environment.Such changes increase survivorship or reproduction by addressing some specific challenge or opportunity presented by the environment.
Adaptive evoluation is the reason different species appear designed to live in their particular environments. It also explains why some species appear to have been designed at cross purposes to others.