Previous to my current job, I used to work with a competitor, let’s call it company E. I had started to help the standards team at E, contributing ideas to our standards proposals. The standards groups, at the time, were in the midst of defining a new radio access technology. We proposed what we thought was a good design. Lo and behold, the company I work for now, let’s call it Q, had contributed a standards design as well. Their design was inferior to ours and had obvious flaws. We were relieved. However, in the next couple of cycles of standards meeting, Q brought up updates to their proposal where they closed all the loopholes. Their design formed the bulk of the new standard.
The morale is that good companies present a moving, ever improving, target. Weak ones will give it their best shot but then stagnate.
The same applies to groups within a company. A strong group will successfully fix the flaws in its product. A weak group will be overwhelmed by the size of the fixes and will stagnate and fail.
At a micro level, the same can be said of individuals 🙂
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