The feeling of cooking the perfect dinner.

The accolade after acing a geometry test.

The joy of finishing an intricate puzzle.

The feeling of success is wonderful. A sort of euphoria induce by brain chemistry and psychology.

It also puts a filter on life. It clouds our judgement from seeing another way to do things. After landing a big sale, we try to do it again the same way we did it before. After building a company that out performs the market, we try to do it again and again using a recipe.

The results of our repeated efforts are rarely the same when reapplied to the same venue. Kodak was once their market leader. and now they are in shambles. Blockbuster pretty much had the corner on the movie rental market. Blackberry not only had the corner on the smartphone market. They were the very best at mobile email.

These companies were not put out of business by a competitor. They were put out of business by the evolution of their products.

Instagram is the evolution of Kodak. Why print our favorite photos? We can only see them when we have them with us or someone is at our house. Now we can have all my favorite photo in our pockets all the time.

Netflix and Redbox put Blockbuster out of business. Blockbuster wanted us to come to their hut to rent their movies. Netflix wants to come to our house to loan us their movies and Redbox wants us to snag a movie from them when convenient for however long is convenient.

These companies were the evolution of their predecessors. Their predecessors were put out of business by the next logical evolution. The predecessor is predisposed to thinking they already have it right. They cannot see the next evolution of their business because they are so focused on iterating on the product they have and resuscitating the old business every way they can.

What has been your biggest success? Since your first success in this area, how has the world changed? How would you repeat your biggest success today?

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