It is apt that the pottery business established by Josiah Wedgwood should tumble into administration at the start of the year in which the world celebrates his grandson Charles Darwin. It is 150 years since Darwin’s book The Origin of Species detailed how evolutionary selection operated through the survival of the fittest. Wedgwood proved unfit and has perished in its current form, pending possible resurrection by a brave or rash investor.

The event points revealingly to the parallels between biological and commercial competition. Management pundits have plundered far less appropriate fields than Darwinian theory for business insights, including golf and Shakespearian drama. Executive audiences presumably see Gary Player or Julius Caesar as exemplars preferable to beetles, humble crawlers whose adaptability makes them evolutionary superstars.