"We usually spend months in concept selection, " said Mr. Lynch.

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Lincoln luxury brand has revived and updated the concept of push-button gear selection, last seen in the U.S. in the early 1960s.

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Costco Wholesale Corp. operates membership warehouses based on the concept that offering members very low prices on a limited selection of nationally branded and selected private label products in a wide range of merchandise categories will produce high sales volumes and rapid inventory turnover.

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Lower margins could be offset by packing the selection with private-label merchandise, a strategy Walmart employed successfully in Mexico with its Bodega concept.

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Yet the intentionality implicit in physis is at the very core of the Darwinian concept of adaptation: forming well-functioning machines that can carry an organism through the filter of natural selection.

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