Refugia
These refugia ensure companies survive even severe competitive pressure, allowing recovery.
Features are temporary advantages. Architecture is defensibility.
Prey populations persist despite predation partly through refugia - safe areas or times reducing predation risk:
Physical refugia: Burrows, dense vegetation, caves, trees, water provide physical refuge. Size refugia: Prey growing beyond predator-accessible sizes reach size refuge; juvenile fish experience high predation but adults grow too large for most predators. Temporal refugia: Activity at different times than predators provides temporal refuge.
Density-dependent refugia: Many refuges can only shelter limited numbers. When prey populations are low, most individuals access refuges and escape predation. When prey populations are high, refuges saturate, forcing surplus individuals into risky areas where predation is high. This creates density-dependent predation providing strong stabilizing regulation.
Refugia help explain why predators rarely drive prey extinct: at low prey density, predation risk drops, allowing prey population recovery.
Business Application of Refugia
Companies maintain protected niches where competitors can't effectively attack: installed base and switching costs, brand loyalty, regulatory advantages (patents, licenses), scale economies, geographic strongholds. These refugia ensure companies survive even severe competitive pressure, allowing recovery. Startups should seek structural refugia that incumbents can't profitably defend.