The landscape is littered with the carcasses of businesses that, for one reason or another, didn't listen to the murmur out in the marketplace: change or perish.

Maybe they had product lines built on fleeting fads. Or maybe they lacked the capital resources required to expand, retool and evolve. Or maybe they just failed to see the signs. Signs of a changing culture. Signs of rapidly evolving technology. Signs that the world was warming. Or that tastes were shifting.

Those signs point to four types of evolution—cultural, technological, environmental or aesthetic—that can mean great success if acted upon … or a company's demise if not.

Take, for example, our first cautionary tale—one of cultural evolution—and how it can be used to forewarn of issues in your own business.

The social network

In the early 2000s, social media took over the collective consciousness of the world, allowing people to share and communicate as never before—sometimes with anonymity, but always with a reach far outstripping the average set of relationships people actively maintain. So, a person could revitalize friendships from college. Or high school. Or elementary school. The social media landscape allowed people to reengage in ways that weren't possible even a few years before. Want to share your life with former co-workers? Done. Want to trade stories with the friend of your friend's brother? Done again.

Social media tapped an inner desire to ensure that everyone around you needed to know everything about your life. And since cellular technology allowed people to communicate more frequently, from all sorts of places, people were primed to extend that communication and constant patter into new media via posts, image uploads and the like.

No company knew that better than Myspace. Founded in 2003 by Tom Anderson, the website myspace.com catered to the notion that the world at large was intrinsically interested in the minutia of common folks' lives. In short order, the site became the de facto leader in social media, with subscribers logging in countless times per day to post tidbits about their day—"I just finished breakfast!" ... "I'm listening to the new band!" ... "Read my latest blog post about my breakfast and my thoughts on listening to a new band!"—as well as skimming the missives of other "friends" online.

Ignoring the evolution

Soon, millions of people across the globe—typically tech-savvy Generation X and millennial demographic populations—flocked to the site. It routinely beat an upstart competitor called Facebook in membership numbers and overall page views. In 2006, the site logged its 100 millionth account. And that's when things started to go wrong.

The Myspace team failed to pick up on subtle cues that a cultural evolution was occurring. In the intervening years, social media sites—like Facebook—emerged, offering more streamlined experiences that dictated functionality, style and substance. These experiences allowed for user creativity—upload your photos, videos and notes—but allowed it to be displayed in very specific ways, ensuring that the user experience was consistent from page to page. This "locked box" approach to social media offered users a short learning curve, ease of use and the ability to connect with others quickly.

This came at a time when Myspace was considered the Wild West of the Internet—anything goes, and the only real policing was done by the community. Users were encouraged to personalize their Myspace pages, and cottage industries sprang up to accommodate the community's desire to change themed backgrounds, provide different fonts and animation, insert music track and videos, and more. The user experience became a riot of color and sound, with some pages so filled with animations that it was nearly impossible to navigate them.

Culturally, people were becoming more attuned to simplicity. The phenomenal take rate of the iPod (and subsequently, the iPhone and iPad) meant technology could be consistent and easy to use.