From humble beginnings the Venetian republic grew in strength, along the way becoming highly efficient in building galleys for trade and defense.

Another example of creative success was the founding of one of the most splendid cities in the world. Its beginning in 451 A.D. was indeed humble. A group of refugees from Attilla the Hun found themselves stranded at a watery lagoon with nowhere else to go. They built their dwellings on stumps of wood.

The location was at the estuary of the River Po, where Venice now stands, supported largely by submerged timber. Taking advantage of the strategic yet uninhabitable location, the citizens turned misfortune to advantage, prospered and within several hundred years, came to dominate trade between the Orient and Europe. As fate would have it, their dominance would be undermined by the very ingenuity that gave rise to their success.

The gulf between expectations and realities has been the subject of fascinating discussion in the modern corporate sector. Danny Miller's The Icarus Paradox, describes how business executives fly too high, fail to heed warnings to restrain their ambitions, and come crashing down. One example he gives is the decline, in the 1970s, of Control Data Corporation. This company succeeded in building faster computers than their larger competitors such as IBM, but overspecialization in computing speed led to weak overall performance. In situations such as these, senior executives frequently ignore advice to exercise caution. Miller recounts similar problems at Wang, Polaroid, ITT and others. Some, like Federal Express, staved off disaster by means of flexibility.

This concept gives compelling evidence of our species' awareness of threats to survival. It shows that we have the potential to improve our chances by changing our behavior patterns.