There's a scene in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass in which the Red Queen, having just led a chase with Alice in which neither seems to have moved from the spot where they began, explains to the perplexed girl: "It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." Evolutionary biologists have used this scene to illustrate the evolutionary arms race among competing species. William Barnett argues that a similar dynamic is at work when organizations compete, shaping how firms and industries evolve over time. Barnett examines the effects--and unforeseen perils--of competing and winning. He takes a fascinating, in-depth look at two of the most competitive industries--computer manufacturing and commercial banking--and derives some startling conclusions. Organizations that survive competition become stronger competitors--but only in the market contexts in which they succeed. Barnett shows how managers may think their experience will help them thrive in new markets and conditions, when in fact the opposite is likely to be the case. He finds that an organization's competitiveness at any given moment hinges on the organization's historical experience. Through Red Queen competition, weaker competitors fail, or they learn and adapt. This in turn heightens the intensity of competition and further strengthens survivors in an ever-evolving dynamic. Written by a leading organizational theorist, The Red Queen among Organizations challenges the prevailing wisdom about competition, revealing it to be a force that can make--and break--even the most successful organization.

Why has the United States struggle to keep up with the rest of the world been so difficult, and why have so many financial calamities originated in the US? Trumping the Red Queen answers these questions as it unravels the mysteries behind creativity and learning. The reader is taken on a journey down into the Rabbit Hole of innovation. The journey reveals, in layman's terms, why so many of the ideals behind mass production and consumption perform so poorly today and why most people in the US are working at a disadvantage. The book's adventure into the Wonderland of creativity explains why small, highly-focused groups can routinely succeed in places where larger organizations flounder. It also explains why so many overseas graduates outperform the US in math and science. The trump card, a unique form of learning called Hyperstruction, is explained in ways that parents, educators and those in business can use it to regain the vitality that once was a unique trademark of the United States. Trumping the Red Queen looks at creativity from within the Rabbit Hole to shed new light on an old subject, cast a fresh perspective, and expose a unique way to survive in today's colossal economy without running everyone into the ground.

The Red Queen Retail Race: An Innovation Pandemic in the Era of Digitization, considers how innovation through technological change has been transforming the retail sector in different markets, and how such change has been accelerated through the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The book is inspired by Alice's encounters of the Red Queen's race in the classic novel Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll (1871), where 'it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place'. This metaphor is illustrative for the service sector that is in a transition from 'a slow world' towards a Red Queen race, where running faster is not enough by itself. It is changing how a consumer society operates, replacing investment in the physical confines of products, stores, and geographical areas, with investment in the apparently unbounded digital universe of information, relationships, and social networks. Online and mobile services enable new entrants to bypass investments in fixed assets and avoid regulatory issues by employing new business models. By leveraging such advantages, technologically-driven international competition has created substantial challenges for established retailers and service providers in domestic markets across the globe. The result is a reconsideration of the role of place in a digital world.