Perry Sink Marshall is an American business consultant and author of books on business strategy, marketing, communications technology, and evolution.
Life Marshall is the son of a pastor. He graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in December 1992.
Work and publications After graduating, Marshall worked as an acoustical engineer at Jensen, where he designed loudspeaker systems for Honda, Mazda, Ford, and Chrysler. Subsequently, he became national sales manager at Synergetic Micro Systems, leaving in 2001 after the company was acquired by Lantronix. He later founded a marketing consultancy, Perry S. Marshall & Associates, and published his first book, Industrial Ethernet: A Pocket Guide. It was followed by second and third editions, co-written with John Rinaldi. Marshall learned to use Google AdWords soon after it was first introduced. In 2002, he released Guerrilla Marketing for Hi-Tech Sales People, an audio CD. With Bryan Todd, he wrote The Definitive Guide to Google AdWords in 2006, and Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords in 2007. In 2011, with Thomas Meloche, Marshall published Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising. He wrote 80/20 Sales and Marketing, published in 2013, expanding on Richard Koch's 80/20 rule, as it applies to various areas in the operation of a business. Inc. magazine reviewed it as one of the "5 Best Sales Books of 2013". He wrote a paper detailing the underlying mathematical basis of the 80/20 rule, which was published in the June 2018 issue of the Harvard Business Review, Italian edition. His paper entitled Biology transcends the limits of computation was published in the journal Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology in October 2021. This paper was highlighted by developmental biologist Michael Levin as a perspective in the ongoing scientific debate regarding biological agency and the limitations of machine metaphors in organismal biology. With William Miller, Arthur Reber and Frantisek Baluska, he co-authored the paper Cellular and Natural Viral Engineering in Cognition-Based Evolution, which was published in the May 2023 issue of Communicative and Integrative Biology. His paper entitled The Role of Quantum Mechanics in Cognition Based Evolution was published in the journal Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology in July 2023 He continues to design high performance loudspeakers and write on the design philosophy he follows. In January 2021, one of his designs was featured on the cover of AudioXpress magazine. Another of his speakers won the Parts Express annual design competition. He hosted the June 2023 meeting of the Chicago Audio Society in 2023. Marshall was one of the co-authors of Michael Levin's 2026 Journal of Biological Sciences paper "Defining Life: A Conversation.
Evolution In 2015, he published Evolution 2.0: Breaking the Deadlock Between Darwin And Design (BenBella Books, Inc., ISBN 978-1-940363-80-6), a publicly accessible account of scientific progress supporting extended evolutionary synthesis. The book accepts the process of natural selection, but based on the work of Barbara McClintock, Lynn Margulis, James A. Shapiro and Denis Noble, rejects the hypothesis that variation arises primarily from random DNA copying errors. It summarises the argument of Hubert Yockey that DNA transcription and translation are encoding and decoding as defined in information theory expounded by Claude Shannon and not derivable from currently known laws of physics. He provides an overview of the following mechanisms, which he regards as more likely sources of variation:
Epigenetics – heritable phenotype changes that do not involve alterations in the DNA sequence Transposition – the rearrangement of DNA segments to different locations in the gene Horizontal gene transfer – the transfer of genetic material between organisms Hybridization – the outcome of sexual reproduction between two distinct species Symbiogenesis – the theory that some organelles of eukaryotic cells are descended from formerly free-living prokaryotes
Evolution 2.0 Technology Prize Marshall has organized a private equity group and created the Evolution 2.0 prize, which is presently a $10 million reward for an Origin Of Information experiment that can be specified as a patentable process. He announced the prize at the Royal Society in May 2019. The Evolution 2.0 prize is offered to anyone who can demonstrate a spontaneously arising communication system that matches Claude Shannon's 1948 definition. Marshall says that if claims that codes are an emergent property of nature are true, then the problem should be in principle solvable and commercially valuable. He suggests that such a discovery would produce breakthrough results in artificial intelligence research. Submissions will be evaluated by a judging panel consisting of:
George Church, Harvard & MIT Denis Noble, Oxford University Michael Ruse, Florida State University
Cancer Symposium and Working Group Marshall was a co-organizer – alongside Frank H. Laukien, James A. Shapiro, Denis Noble and Henry Heng – of the three-day Cancer and Evolution Symposium in October 2020, serving as facilitator on the third day.The proceedings led to a 2021 special issue of Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology dedicated to cancer evolution, which included Marshall's paper "Biology transcends the limits of computation." The symposium also led to the creation of the Cancer Evolution Working Group within the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)), and to the monthly online Cancer Evolution Seminar Series. Marshall is a faculty member at the 1st International Conference on Polyploid Giant Cancer Cells at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, February 2024, an event documented in a 2025 meeting report in Cancer Letters.
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