“Success, whether academic or professional, involves an ability to survive in a new environment and, eventually, to change it.”
There is no unique solution for everything. Our life is changeable and unpredictable and nobody can anticipate how it turns out. That fact necessitates the ability to adapt to changeable environment and conditions.
Nowadays, it became absolutely clear, that successful business is impossible without international collaboration. The growth of the company usually will lead to necessity of entering the international markets and competing there. This is always a new territory that has its own peculiar properties companies has to deal with and adjust to. Only a few of them are really able to make such adaptation and, eventually, to succeed. For instance, well-known American chips manufacturer “Lays” was confronted with difficulties when tried to sell its production in Asian markets. Chinese consumers refused to deal with such strange for them spicy tastes of pizza or onion. They were accustomed to more bland tastes. That fact compelled company to alter its production in order to allow asian customers to savour the flavor of each mouthful of new chips with tastes of tofu or spinach. Just after that, when the brand became more popular, “Lays” was able to change the Asian chips market by gradual junction and adaptation of costumers to new spicy American tastes.
Certainly, adaptation to unknown environment is not just vital part of business company strategy, but also indispensable quality of successful personality. In past, the implement of every mathematician was just pencil and paper. All calculations a mathematician was supposed to compute either mentally or on the paper. With the advent of computers his work routine changed sharply. Now, almost in each field of mathematics from pure algebra and geometry to applied mathematics and robotics he should use high performance program applications for making calculations or creating parallel programs. Just most adaptable scientists from old generation were able to master new kind of techniques. Another example are programmers, who should also be as flexible as mathematicians, if not better. By virtue of rapidly changing computer world, successful programmer must be able to catch up with myriad amount of new standards and languages and just after that invent their own.
And finally, ability to be malleable, that is to be able to adjust to changing circumstances is included in human being nature from the very beginning. Every schoolboy is acquainted with Darwin’s natural selection theory that in changing animal world the more flexible individual is, the more chances for survival it has. Many centuries ago, when people were settling new territories and the population was growing, the hunger problem became the main issue. The reason was the strong paucity of natural food resources. But people have solved this problem by developing of new agriculture methods and transforming of surrounding barren lands in fertile soils. That was really successful change of the surrounding environment for own purpose. Otherwise, people could have suffered the same fate as the dinosaurs.
In our century, the century of information, when the environment dictate us its own rules, the only available and incontestable method of molding it in our way, is to adapt to it.
TOEFL listening discussions: A conversation between a student and her coach