While at a conference a few years ago, I was introduced to the idea of “over-innovating”. While competition forces incremental improvements, a line gets crossed between improving for the user’s sake, and beating out the most recent introduction. Over time, these advancements cost more than they’re worth allowing disrupting players to come in with new business models and value propositions, typically based on completely different feature sets) pushing the leader out (=Honda/Toyota’s hybrid/efficiency v. GM/Ford’s SUV’s).