clinrise derma, dr s ranganathan

1. Know to ‘use and be useful’ to others in the ecosystem is the strong management
message, the rats convey to the corporate world in particular. Among the different
species of rodents, rats over score all other animals in the group such as Porcupine,
Capybara, Beavers, Squirrels etc., in the population size.
Why and how rats alone could take such great advantage of the situation and become
‘omnipresent’ and abundant in their population size when compared to other rodents?
The porcupine has strong spines (quills) for their defense. Even the lion and tiger may
not easily dare to go near a porcupine. With such powerful defense weapons, the
porcupines are expected to be more in numbers than rats. On the other hands,
squirrels are very smart, agile and fast runners and climbers of trees. But they are also
not so dominant in their population size when compared to rats.
The discrepancy and anomaly in the abundance and prevalence of rats over other
rodents conveys a strong management message that every corporate must learn. The
success depends upon three fundamental factors such as
1. Strength/power to prove and win over competition
2. Smartness in using the opportunity
3. Be useful to other in the ecosystem
Porcupine falls under the first category. Indeed, it has strong spines (quills) for its
defense. But it appears that the animal perhaps would have over dependent on the
spines and hence would not have developed the other two qualities. Strength alone
help none to achieve anything is what the porcupines conveys to the corporate world.
Whereas, the rats perfected to be an ‘opportunist’, learned the art of using the
opportunity in the best way possible and become even a co-habitant with man himself.
Can it be possible for any animal to be so successful only because it has just learned the
art of using the opportunity?
Besides that, rats have learned to use the opportunity and also become very useful to
many other animals in the ecosystem. Rats are the main food of cats, foxes, snakes,
wide variety of birds like eagle, owl etc., in the ecosystem. If the population of rats
decline, necessarily it will have serious impact on the population of those rat eating
animals as well.
In brief, rats have become one of the important elements of balancing the food chain in
the ecosystem. The nature has favoured rats with short gestation period, larger litter
size etc., whereas such favours are not there with porcupines. The gestation period of
porcupines is 210 days as against 21-24 days gestation period of rats.

2. Corporate and its employees must get their management message right and straight
from rats. They are
1. One should not relay too much on ones knowledge, experience or the might
2. One must constantly update the knowledge to ‘learn and use’ the
opportunity
3. One should be ‘useful’ to others in every possible way in the corporate
ecosystem
If the above message is not derived well by the corporate, inadvertently they may dig
their own graveyard.
Nature has created such variety and diversity in flora and fauna not for the man to just
destroy and eat but to learn as well. Hence the corporate must invest its time to learn
from nature to become successful ‘organically’ and ‘commercially’.
Dr S Ranganathan, ClinRise Derma Pvt., Ltd., Chennai
Learn more from the management books
1. Jungle wisdom for corporate management – lessons from the university of
nature by Swami Sukhabodananda and Dr S Ranganathan
2. Nature – the entrepreneur by Dr S Ranganathan