Week 6: The Red Queen in the Boardroom

Zero-sum competition through a game-theory lens — why running faster doesn't get you ahead when everyone else is running too

12 April 2027

Outline#

• the Red Queen effect, borrowed from evolutionary biology: relative position matters more than absolute improvement
• arms-race dynamics in game theory, and why unilateral disarmament rarely happens first
• boardroom cases: pay ratchets, feature-parity product wars, and credential escalation revisited from week 4
• reframing weeks 1–5 as instances of one underlying game structure, not five unrelated stories