A few weeks ago, in a coaching session with a senior medtech executive, we were discussing a big presentation she had to make. “How do I work in ecosystem, AI and agile?” she asked. I was a little baffled: these things weren’t really relevant to what she wanted to say. “I’ve got to,” she explained, “that’s all everyone wants to hear about.” The conversation reminded me of Richard Dawkins’ coinage of the word ‘meme’ – and how ideas, like pathogens, spread through populations. Stick with me for a moment and I’ll show you how Darwinian thinking explains why management fads propagate so quickly and how to build immunity to them.

In biology, epidemics begin when a pathogen finds a susceptible host and a means of transmission. The same is true of ideas. A new management concept, like ‘customer centricity’, ‘digital transformation’ or ‘ecosystem thinking’ – emerges in a small cluster of firms or consultancies. It finds hosts in executives hungry for novelty and spreads through conferences, LinkedIn posts and glossy white papers.

Consultants, business schools and trade media act as vectors, amplifying the contagion. The idea mutates as it travels: each carrier adds its own spin, diluting meaning but increasing reach. Before long, the idea has achieved pandemic status. Everyone is talking about it, few understand it and even fewer apply it effectively.

Richard Dawkins coined the term meme to describe units of cultural transmission, ideas that replicate, mutate and compete for survival. In the life sciences industry, memes behave much like viruses. They exploit cognitive shortcuts – our preference for novelty, our fear of missing out, our desire to appear progressive.

Importantly, a meme’s fitness depends on its transmissibility, not its truth. ‘Agile transformation’ spreads because it sounds dynamic and modern, not because it is universally relevant. ‘Ecosystem strategy’ thrives because it flatters leaders’ ambitions to be central rather than peripheral. The most contagious ideas are those that appeal to emotion and identity, not evidence.

Just as a biological environment selects for certain traits, the business environment selects for certain ideas. And when uncertainty is high and competition is intense, firms become more susceptible to fashionable thinking. The pressure to appear adaptive and innovative makes them vulnerable to infection.

Conversely, firms with strong strategic immune systems (clear purpose, disciplined language and robust routines) are less likely to catch every passing meme. They evaluate ideas against their own evolutionary niche rather than adopting them wholesale. They ask: ‘Does this fit our environment?’ rather than: ‘Is everyone else doing it?’

Like biological epidemics, idea epidemics have symptoms. The first is semantic drift: words lose meaning as they spread. ‘Agile’ becomes a synonym for ‘fast’. ‘Ecosystem’ becomes shorthand for ‘partnership’. The second symptom is resource misallocation: teams chase the fashion rather than the fit. The third is organisational fatigue: after each wave of enthusiasm subsides, cynicism rises and genuine innovation becomes harder.

In evolutionary terms, this is maladaptation. The organisation expends energy on traits that do not improve fitness. It becomes a host for ideas that replicate but do not confer advantage.

When I study firms that seem to have immunity to fads, I see three very Darwinian behaviours.

First, variation. They gather ideas from many sources, not just the consultant with the slickest slides. Second, selection. They encourage challenge and test ideas with critical thinking. Third, amplification. They deliberately manage the spread of the idea, in its unmutated form, through the business. In practice, this means treating every new management concept as a hypothesis, not a prescription: ‘Test it. Adapt it. Keep what fits. Discard what doesn’t.’

Darwin taught us that survival depends not on strength or intelligence but on adaptability. In the ecology of ideas, the firms that thrive are not those that chase every new meme but those that integrate useful mutations into their existing DNA.

So, the next time a consultant tells you that your company must ‘go agile’, ‘build an ecosystem’ or ‘transform digitally’, pause before you seize the idea to ask whether it fits your environment or merely flatters your corporate ego. Because, whether in the epidemiology of ideas or infections, susceptibility is dangerous and immunity is intelligence.