Balancing stagnation and iteration
Things become successful for a reason; they strike a cord and win fans because some combination of traits came together to create magic.
The trouble is, there isn’t much that’s truly timeless.
Tastes change, expectations evolve, technology marches forward, and gradually the magic disappears.
So we iterate, we evolve the thing, we update, we tweak, we polish, all in the hopes of keeping the magic alive.
However, there are as many failures as successes on this path. For every ‘iPhone’ and ‘Old Spice,’ there is a ‘New Coke’ and a ‘Windows Vista’.
The difference? Recognising and retaining the ‘core’. You can change the peripherals; people will forgive and often welcome that, but mess with what made people fall in love with the thing in the first place and you’re in trouble.
The hard part? Sometimes you don’t know what the core is until you change it. And by then it could be too late.