Coelacanth

In 1938, a South African museum curator found a strange fish in a local catch - a coelacanth, supposedly extinct since the dinosaurs died 65 million years ago. The discovery was like finding a living dinosaur. Coelacanths had left a rich fossil record ending at the Cretaceous extinction, then apparently vanished. In fact, they'd simply retreated to deep-water caves where they remain today, unchanged in body plan for 400 million years.

The coelacanth's survival strategy was geographic retreat to stable refugia rather than adaptation to changing conditions. Deep submarine caves off the Comoros Islands and Indonesia provided stable environments: consistent temperature, no weather, no terrestrial predators, minimal competition. The coelacanth didn't evolve because it didn't need to - its environment remained constant while surface ecosystems transformed. Evolution acts on populations facing selection pressure; remove the pressure and stasis results.

For business, coelacanths represent survival through retreat to stable niches rather than competitive adaptation. Some companies thrive by avoiding competition entirely - serving markets so small or specialized that larger competitors ignore them. These 'coelacanth companies' can persist unchanged for decades while industries transform around them. The strategy works only if the niche remains stable. Coelacanths couldn't survive if deep-sea temperatures changed or new predators invaded. Niche retreat buys time, not invulnerability.