We altered our ecological niche by creating civilization.

So, as you all know, species lived in particular ecological niches and particular environments, and the pressures of those environments selected which changes, through random mutation in species, were going to be preserved.

You know, 20 years ago, some of the most amazing brands were built in the early days of cable, that met these new niche content demands from consumers.

But it's going to have a big impact because we're going to have niche drugs.

It's particularly astonishing because each one of these organisms, each subsystem, each cell type, each gene, has evolved in its own unique environmental niche with its own unique history.

We're also looking at survival of the fittest, not in just competition terms in our modern context of destroy the other or beat them to the ground, but really to fit together and build niches and have growth that is good.

The women in this room and watching in L.A. and all around the world are not exceptions.

So here's an example of a business model canvas from a life sciences company that was going to provide E. coli cell lines for simplified downstream processing.

So let's see how they got from something that started over here which you shouldn't laugh because your first canvas might have looked like this and what happened after they got out of the building.

A4 it should be local, run by communities, or niche, for some smaller groups like business but then it's not free it's very expensive.

I think that was a pretty good indication about my future career as an investigative journalist, and what I've seen from being in this access to information field for so long is that it used to be quite a niche interest, and it's gone mainstream.

Now, in hindsight, after the end of the class, they were the ones who actually went in and said, Well, yeah, that was kind of a definition of what a customer segment was, but they didn't really describe who.

That is, people might actually kind of find you are an okay substitute, but really don't understand your unique value until some tipping point where they realize, oh my gosh, you're just not another vendor in an existing market, you actually solve better a set of needs for a niche or you're a low cost supplier that really makes you unique and special and revenues take off.

And it's a complex sales growth chart because in the first couple of years you're just kind of getting the spillover of people who kind of think you're just a competitor in the existing market and your sales will kind of toddle along until if you're correct and you were right about that niche or low cost segmentation you will start seeing an exponential increase in sales.

Now the other thing is that in a resegmented market and again we use Southwest as a low cost entry or whole foods as a unique niche supplier via positioning and what you really want to start asking is what factors can you eliminate that your industry has long competed on or what can you reduce below the industry standard or raise above the industry standard or what can be created that the industry has never offered?