Concepts / Competition
The Red Queen effect.
In a competitive and changing environment, standing still means falling behind. Actors must keep adapting simply to hold their position, because their rivals and the world around them keep changing too.
The name comes from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass (1871), in which the Red Queen tells Alice: "it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." The biologist Leigh Van Valen used it in 1973, and organisation scholars later applied it to competing firms.
How it works
Running to stay in place.
What counts is progress measured against others.
- 01
The environment changes
Priorities, technology, media and expectations keep shifting.
- 02
Rivals adapt
Competitors respond with new methods, messages and alliances.
- 03
You must keep running
Holding your position needs constant adaptation, and more of it over time.
- 04
Standing still means falling behind
Stop even briefly and you lose ground, and catching up costs more than keeping up.
Why it matters
Why the race can be costly.
In a Red Queen race, effort can rise year after year while relative position stays flat. An advantage won by a new method tends to fade as others copy it. That can make competition costly, and it means success is never settled: what kept an organisation level last time may not be enough next time. Try it in the graphic: stand still for a moment, then try to catch up.
Where it can show up
Wherever rivals learn from one another.
These are general patterns, not findings about any particular party, institution, government or election.
Political competition
New campaign methods spread quickly. The edge they give can fade as soon as rivals adopt them.
Public institutions
As technology and expectations change, services must keep improving just to hold public confidence.
Organisations
Organisations that have succeeded can grow attached to methods that are no longer enough.
Rules and responses
Rules and the ways people find around them can develop together, each answering the other.
Responding to it
Some ways to respond.
The race rarely stops, but organisations can choose how they take part in it.
- Watch what is changing, not only what rivals are doing.
- Invest in capacities that build over time, such as people, knowledge and trust.
- Count the cost of keeping up, and ask whether every race is worth running.
- Beware of past success. Methods that worked can become a trap when conditions change.
- Look for ground of your own, where you are not simply copying others.
Origins and further reading
Where the idea comes from.
In evolutionary biology the idea explains why species keep evolving even when their surroundings seem stable: their rivals, predators and parasites keep evolving too.
- Carroll, L. (1871). Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. London: Macmillan.
- Van Valen, L. (1973). A new evolutionary law. Evolutionary Theory, 1, 1–30.
- Barnett, W. P. and Hansen, M. T. (1996). The Red Queen in organizational evolution. Strategic Management Journal, 17(S1), 139–157.
- Derfus, P. J., Maggitti, P. G., Grimm, C. M. and Smith, K. G. (2008). The Red Queen effect: competitive actions and firm performance. Academy of Management Journal, 51(1), 61–80.
About this concept
A general idea, not a verdict.
This page explains a general concept from political science, economics and the study of risk. It does not describe or assess any particular party, institution, government or election. Related: Fly-by-night campaigns and Goodhart's law.