The Red Queen Effect
Posted on August 20, 2010 by SalonBiz
The Red Queen said, “It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”
For an evolutionary system (business), continuing development (innovation) is needed just in order to maintain its fitness relative to the systems (competition) it is co-evolving with.*
The Red Queen said, “It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”
The term is taken from the Red Queen’s race in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass. American biologist Leigh Van Valen who was inspired by the Red Queen character first coined it.
Applied to business, many businesses work hard to keep their way of doing business and follow their policies, however, this “running” is not taking them anywhere. They stay in the same place. In business, to keep yourself competitive, you should run hard, but you should run even harder to get ahead and go somewhere.
Innovation is the answer to running harder. Innovation is a change in the thought process for doing something, is a radical change in doing business, working processes, thinking or designing products.
In today’s competitive world, “running” is necessary to barely survive. Innovation will give you the advantage to outrun your competition.
*Van Valen L. (1973): “A New Evolutionary Law”, Evolutionary Theory 1, p. 1-30.
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