One of my favorite YouTube channels is Veritasium. This morning over my breakfast I watched one of the recent episodes, The Longest-Running Evolution Experiment, which details an bacteria evolutionary experiment that’s been ongoing for the last 30+ years. Near the end of the video, the professor running the experiment explains that contrary to initial expectations, that evolution in the fixed laboratory environment would eventually plateau:

The power law model says things slow down, but it doesn’t have an upper bound. Things will just keep going faster, but at a slower and slower rate.

If thousands of generations of bacteria can continue to improve in a sterile laboratory, what does this say about our projects, teams, and companies, in dynamic environment?