Andy Grove recently introduced a new line of thinking in regards to products and competition, the Creosote Conundrum.
The Creosote is a bush, living in the desert. It generally will be the biggest plant because it does everything in its power to gain all of the water. Moving this comparison to companies, the Creosote Conundrum happens when one project becomes successful, it will do whatever it can to have all the resources, all the attention, etc.
It's one thing for this to happen in the desert but quite another when it happens in your business. The danger of having one product that takes everything away from other products is that a mindset sets in that nothing can be done without first wondering what the impact will be on the popular product. New ideas can't occur in this environment because many times, those ideas will be so unrelated to the popular product that to wonder what the impact will be misses the point.
Posted by Josh at December 12, 2006 05:44 AM