There is a great scene from the 2009 movie Duplicity starring Clive Owen and Julia Roberts. The following dialogue is a conversation between Ms. Stenwick (Julia Roberts) and Howard Tully (Tom Wilkinson).
Ms. Stenwick?
Someone made fire.
Someone was first.
I don’t mean the idiot who found a burning stick and kept it going.
I mean the fellow who could make fire.
And until that knowledge was stolen, that fellow was the most powerful person on the planet.
And it means something to be first.
To be most.
It means a great deal.
It means you have an opportunity to reproduce with the highest frequency and with the most desirable partners.
It means your offspring have the greatest chance of survival and a better opportunity to make their own fire.
I personally believe that human evolution
has run its course.
We live in a world where the people who can make fire have a tendency to wear condoms, sit in casinos and drink themselves into a stupor.
I believe that individual evolution has been replaced by something else.
By a shared evolution.
A communal contest, if you will.
I believe, Ms. Stenwick, in corporate evolution.
I believe that the corporation that is first, that is the most, has an opportunity to manufacture with the highest frequency and in the most desirable markets, and that its shareholders, by extension, have the greatest chance of survival and reinvestment.
I don’t imagine you’re quite aware of the service you and Mr. Bauer
provided this corporation last night.
We were just doing our job, sir.
Mr. Partiz may appear a fool, but he is anything but.
He has given Burkett and Randle a gift that will change our business, our lives, forever.
So the question, Ms. Stenwick, is…
…what I need to know is, can I share my fire with you?