Red Queen Effect/Hypothesis :
The Red Queen Hypothesis states that species continually need to change to keep up with the competition. If a species would stop changing, it would lose the competition with the other species that do continue to change. If you take for example the relationship between a parasite and its host. Both the parasite and the host are involved in an arms race with each other. There is pressure on the host to evolve to become resistant to the parasite and there is pressure on the parasite to evolve ways to cope with the resistance of the host. Both species need to change genetically to keep up with the changes in the other species. Red Queen Hypothesis is relevant not just in biology but in the corporate world too. Any company or organization need to regularly adopt and adapt to market conditions else it will face extinction or loos the edge in the market. One Example: Xerox.
In 1959, Xerox launched the Xerox 914 photocopier revolutionized the document-copying industry.
According to Wikipedia: “One of the most successful Xerox products ever, a 914 model could make 100,000 copies per month (one copy every 26.4 seconds, or ~136 copies/hour.)”
But most everyone knows the story of PARC (or the Palo Alto Research Center). PARC’s inventions include the mouse, the laser printer, and a windows/icon-based user interface (sound familiar?).And they gave it away. For years , Xerox management did absolutely nothing with their cutting-edge inventions and continued to profit off of the 914 photocopier.
Meanwhile, Apple, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard ”borrowed” their technology and made billions off of it