Clayton L. Christensen wrote an intriguing book discussing why well-managed, customer-sensitive, highly-successful companies fail. He proposed a somewhat counter-intuitive explanation for such failure. He postulated that successful companies are often so focused on what their customers are requesting that the companies limit themselves to mainstream in-demand products. Meanwhile, smaller businesses develop products that may not immediately have as high of demand or profit margin, but which have more potential for growth. Eventually these smaller companies out-perform and stunt the larger, previously successful companies.
Such a cycle may be inevitable in business, but perhaps a possible prevention for such failure is to invest in novel ideas; ideas that may not be very popular or considered to be especially lucrative at the time. It appears that pursuing only those things which are safest, most-widely accepted, and in popular-demand may cause one to miss greater opportunities that arise from creative, diverse, and even risky decisions.
