A shared slogan is not a shared model — the Red Queen's 'run to stay in place' travelled from Van Valen's biology into organizational theory and semiconductor economics, but only one import carried the constant-hazard formalism; the rest carried only Carroll's image

red-queenvan-valencross-domain-metaphormetaphor-vs-formalismorganizational-theorysemiconductorshazard-ratemetaphor-inflation

The recurring argument in this cluster is not "the Red Queen hypothesis" and not "organizations evolve like species." It is a discipline about travelling models: the same image — "it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place" — was borrowed into three fields, but borrowing the slogan is not the same as borrowing the mathematics behind it. Only one of the imports actually carried Van Valen's formalism (a fitted, age-independent extinction/failure hazard). The other carried only Lewis Carroll's picture, and nobody has yet shown the picture scans as the model.

That distinction — metaphor versus formalism — is the whole point, and it is why this is a map and not a pile of notes that happen to say "Red Queen." Van Valen's 1973 "Law of Extinction" is a specific quantitative claim: a taxon's probability of going extinct in a given interval is roughly constant, independent of how long it has already survived. William Barnett carried exactly that structure into organizational theory: his founding 1996 study fit an explicit failure-rate (hazard) model to Illinois banks, and later disk-drive work extended the program to computer manufacturing — though whether that 2004 study is the same hazard model in the Red Queen form, or only a compatible directional finding, is not yet established in the vault. The ICLE semiconductor white paper reached for the same words — chip-makers "must run constantly just to stay in place" — but sourced the phrase to Carroll, grounded its actual analysis in industrial-organization economics, and contained no extinction-probability or hazard-rate content at all. A genuine search located no formal test mapping node-race turnover onto Van Valen's constant hazard, from any of the traditions involved.

Titled for the argument, not the recurring entity (the 2026-07-25 lesson: the recurring entity is not the recurring argument). "Red Queen" and "Van Valen" are what these notes mention; what they argue is how to tell a real cross-domain import from a decorative one — and the vault's standing wariness of metaphor-inflation is the reason the distinction is worth mapping.

The formalism at the source — what actually got borrowed

• claim-red-queen-hypothesis-names-running-to-stay-in-place — the origin and the yardstick. Van Valen (1973) named the coevolutionary "run to stay in place" dynamic and, crucially for this map, attached a number to it: a constant, age-independent probability of extinction. Everything downstream is measured against whether it imported this quantitative core or only the picture. Honest ceiling: the note itself is Tier 4 (Wikipedia) and its own audit_status flags that the "constant extinction probability" attribution should be checked against Van Valen's primary paper before any load-bearing reuse — so the yardstick is a well-settled definition, not yet a primary-verified one.

The import that carried the math — Barnett, industry by industry

This is where the formalism actually travelled: not as a slogan but as a failure-rate (hazard) model — verified as such for the 1996 bank study, and extended (with the disk-drive study's model specification still unrecovered) to computer manufacturing. The [unverified-quant] and publisher-page caveats are named on the notes and preserved here.

• claim-barnett-applied-red-queen-to-organizational-competition — the framing claim: Barnett carried Van Valen's model into organizational strategy, arguing survivors of competition grow stronger only within the market context in which they succeeded. Its own framing quote is still the Tier-3 Stanford GSB publisher page ("two of the most competitive industries — computer manufacturing and commercial banking"), which is why the note stays seedling; but the empirical question it routed is now answered by the two primaries below.
• claim-barnett-hansen-1996-founding-red-queen-test-used-illinois-banks — the founding test, on banks (Tier 1, authors' own abstract): "Estimates of organizational failure rates reveal a Red Queen among Illinois banks, and support our predictions." This is the formalism arriving intact — an actual failure-rate (hazard) model, not a figure of speech, and the one leg where the hazard-model form is directly attested.
• claim-barnett-book-text-asserts-disk-drive-industry-drives-up-failure-rates — Barnett's own book text (Tier 1, Princeton free-preview chapter): the hard-disk-drive industry is competitive "such that similar organizations drive up each other's failure rates." The same age-independent competitive-hazard mechanism as the biological original, stated as an empirical matter and coupled with an adaptation clause (firms respond by improving) — the coevolutionary half.
• claim-barnett-mckendrick-2004-tested-red-queen-on-disk-drive-makers — the directly-tested disk-drive study (Tier 1 abstract, but [unverified-quant]: no coefficients/hazard ratios/sample size recovered, full ASQ paper unopened — routed to question-verify-barnett-mckendrick-2004-disk-drive-hazard-estimates, still open). Finding: large firms led the technology race yet failed to become stronger competitors than small rivals — a specific, non-obvious result consistent with the Red Queen logic that competitive exposure, not size, builds strength.
• One honesty note the cluster carries on its own face: the book's "two central case industries" phrasing bundles at least two distinct empirical projects (the 1996 bank study and the later disk-drive work), on two datasets — not one study spanning both. The map keeps that visible rather than smoothing it.

Anchored by entity-william-barnett (person hub, built in a prior promotion — listed, not built by this pass), the vault's designated case of an evolutionary mechanism imported into organizational strategy "for both its insight and its inflation-risk."

The load-bearing seam — where only the metaphor arrived

These are the notes that make the cluster an argument. Cut them and you have "Van Valen had a hypothesis" next to "Barnett applied it" — a two-item resemblance. With them, the cluster adjudicates what survives a cross-domain transfer and what doesn't.

• claim-icle-invokes-red-queen-as-carroll-metaphor-not-van-valen-formalism — the seam. A full read of the 46-page ICLE white paper "From Moore's Law to Market Rivalry" (2025) found "Red Queen" used exactly once and sourced explicitly to Lewis Carroll's tale, not to Van Valen — no extinction-probability, no hazard-rate, no "Law of Extinction." The borrow stopped at the picture. (Tier 1, direct read of the primary.)
• claim-icle-grounds-competition-for-the-market-in-industrial-organization-economics — what ICLE grounds its argument in instead: Schumpeter, Teece's dynamic capabilities, and Evans & Schmalensee's "competition for the market" — named industrial-organization and management constructs, not biology. (Tier 2; the Evans & Schmalensee wording confirmed only as ICLE reproduces it.) The two clusters share a slogan but not a source model — which is exactly what keeps the bridge metaphorical.
• observation-no-formal-test-maps-semiconductor-node-races-onto-van-valens-constant-hazard — the negative result that closes the seam. A genuine search — the ICLE PDF, the organizational Red Queen literature descending from Barnett, and general searches for a Moore's/Rock's-Law × extinction-probability model — located no formal (statistical) test mapping semiconductor node-race turnover onto Van Valen's constant hazard. Evidence of absence within the sources reached, honestly scoped as "not found after a genuine search," not proof none exists. (Tier 1 for the ICLE read; the negative literature-search component untiered.) Its commentary adds the sharpest point: ICLE's own prose describes an increasing-hazard story (difficulty compounding each node), the opposite of Van Valen's flat, duration-independent signature — so if a survival curve were ever fitted, the metaphor might not even point the right way.

The economic driver that made the vault chase this bridge in the first place is claim-rocks-law-is-moores-laws-economic-inverse — Rock's Law forcing chipmakers into a perpetual capital arms-race — included here as the context that generated the "run to stay in place" reading, not as a Red Queen note in its own right.

The question this map is built around — answered, in the direction that matters

• question-does-competition-for-the-market-map-onto-red-queen-extinction-probability (filed _answered) — the load-bearing thread. Answered metaphorical-only on the ICLE-specific mapping, with the broader "does it exist formally anywhere" half left as evidence-of-absence (primaries Evans & Schmalensee, Barnett SMJ 1996, and Van Valen 1973 remain unopened leads). The map's whole spine is this answer: the slogan travelled everywhere, the formalism travelled once.

What this map is not

• Not moc-red-queen. It deliberately does not organize around the entity or the loudest name; it organizes around the metaphor-vs-formalism test the notes actually perform.
• The OU/stasis note is kin, not member. observation-mean-reversion-to-an-optimum-recurs-across-fossil-stasis-bonds-and-sgd mentions the Red Queen in passing but argues a different bridge (Ornstein–Uhlenbeck mean-reversion across fossil stasis, bond pricing, and SGD) and belongs to the punctuated-equilibrium/stasis thread. Left out on purpose rather than pulled in to pad the count.
• Punctuated equilibrium is the sibling argument, cross-linked not folded. The vault tracks a second evolutionary model imported into organizational theory — the Tushman–Romanelli punctuated-equilibrium lineage (moc-schema-change-and-restructuring) — which the Barnett note names as the same-shape companion. Same family (biology → organization theory, watched for the same metaphor-inflation), different specific argument; a pointer, not a member.

Open threads (honest caveats, not hidden)

• Every member is status: seedling. This map organizes the cluster's argument; it does not upgrade the notes.
• The yardstick note is the weakest-sourced. The Van Valen origin is Tier 4 with its constant-hazard attribution explicitly flagged for a primary check — so the map rests its definitional anchor on a settled-but-unverified source and its empirical weight on the Tier-1 Barnett primaries. A reader should weight the bank/disk-drive hazard findings and the ICLE direct read most heavily.
• One quant still unopened — and with it, one leg of the "carried the math" claim. Barnett & McKendrick (2004)'s statistics were never recovered ([unverified-quant]); the directional finding clears the floor, but the numbers — and whether the 2004 disk-drive study is a hazard model in the Red Queen form at all, versus a competitive-strength measure of a different shape — do not. That is exactly what the open question-verify-barnett-mckendrick-2004-disk-drive-hazard-estimates exists to settle. So "the formalism travelled" is firmly attested for the 1996 banks and only provisionally for the disk drives.
• The negative result is scoped, not universal. "No formal test located" is bounded by the sources reached in one session; it is the honest current state, not a proof of non-existence.