The Red Queen Effect By Henri Ford

For those who aren't familiar with the concept, you can read quickly my explanation of the red queen effect in that article.

“Business men go down with their businesses because they like the old way so well they cannot bring themselves to change. One sees them all about -- men who do not know that yesterday is past, and who woke up this morning with their last year's ideas. It could almost be written down as a formula that when a man begins to think that he has at last found his method he had better begin a most searching examination of himself to see whether some part of his brain has not gone to sleep. There is a subtle danger in a man thinking that he is “fixed“ for life. It indicates that the next jolt of the wheel of progress is going to fling him off. [...]

If to petrify is success, all one has to do is to humor the lazy side of the mind; but if to grow is success, then one must wake up anew every morning and keep awake all day. I saw great businesses become but the ghost of a name because someone thought they could be managed just as they were always managed, and though the management may have been most excellent in its day, its excellence consisted in its alertness to its day, and not in slavish following of its yesterdays. Life, as I see it, is not a location, but a journey. Even the man who most feels himself ‘settled’ is not settled—he is probably sagging back. Everything is in flux, and was meant to be. Life flows. We may live at the same number of the street, but it is never the same man who lives there.“

-- Henry Ford, My Life and Work