Concept · Decision-Making Mental Models
Red Queen Effect
Origin: Evolutionary biology, applied to business
Biological Parallel
Rough-skinned newts produce enough tetrodotoxin to kill 25 humans, yet garter snakes evolved resistance and eat them anyway. So newts evolved higher toxicity, snakes evolved stronger resistance, newts escalated further—a 40-million-year arms race where both species run faster just to stay in the same predator-prey relationship. The Red Queen's race is ubiquitous in biology: host-parasite coevolution, male-female sexual conflict, antibiotic resistance. Competitive advantage decays continuously because competitors adapt, making perpetual innovation the cost of survival.