Most of the world around - people, products, organizations, nations, what-have-you - everyone and everything is trying to be the best. It seems inane trying to define what the the best can mean. Do try defining it one of those poker nights - I'm promising you it won't be easy. Most of us know that this definition bit would be quite a painful and possibly pointless exercise. Now the curiosity point - when we spend so much of our energy trying to be the Best, won't it be worthwhile thinking about what it means?
Just to get you going, let me throw in a couple of colors on the palette. Is there an idea of two different 'Bests', from two viewpoints, e.g. the buyer and the seller? The best thing to buy (and therefore the best product to create?) could be, let's say, a reusable diaper. Once soiled, it goes for a wash and a dry and it's all ready to be used again. From the seller's viewpoint, this product could be a disaster. You are converting a stream of expensive purchases into one single purchase. Now who spends resources creating products - the customer or the company? The company, or the seller, has a different best - one diaper that has some sustainable claim justifying a higher price than the one currently selling.
On the same thread of baby-products - can the best be too good for its own good? The feeding bottle is frowned upon because it makes it so easy for the baby to have milk that the baby will stop suckling. Can one formula feed be so tasty that babies refuse to have anything else? Tasty snacks are one kind of best, another kind of worst. Invasive species of plants could be another example - weeds a more common example. The Asian Carp in American lakes is yet another example and crows taking over cities from sparrows another.
There can certainly be too much of a good thing. Disruptive innovation is based around the theory that products and technologies get better much faster than consumer's needs do. Again, being the best, at least in technical terms, may not be the best thing to be. How many mega-pixels or shaving blades do you really need? Or take the post iPod music systems - did any of us need the 11-band graphic equalizer?
Interesting thought, perhaps leads to the point that 'good' has context around it, and maybe a limit too. We, or customers often don't qualify our expectation but that's what we mean. We want a hardy, native plant that's less-disease proof - but not the one that is so hardy that it chokes everything around and refuses to die. We want a product that 'works'. We don't want to run faster than the tiger - especially when it's just a pug chasing us.
Interesting, right?
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