Innovation rarely happens by someone just trying to solve a problem.

Most of the times, it is just one competitor trying to offer a little more than the other to gain an upper hand in the market. This 'little more' can be anything from a lower price to better packaging to better functionality. Once that is delivered, it becomes the new norm that the rest of the competition achieves over time.

Meanwhile, everyone is on the lookout for a different way of offering that 'little more'. And the cycle repeats.

While it is good for the customer to have the quality of products constantly going up and prices down, it is not so good for the ones actually delivering the products. Some can't keep up in this race to find newer ways of offering 'little more'. They are wiped out of the market. Few survive and march on. Until someone new comes up with a 'little more' that wipes them out of the market.

Now, if you extend this phenomenon to the workplace, you will see that it is not a model that scales.

In the workplace, the customers are the companies and the ones delivering the products are the employees. Companies that survive get an increasing quality of work at decreasing prices with time. (If you are unable to relate to decreasing prices/salaries, think inflation). Employees, be it by working increasing hours, or not freely sharing their knowledge with others, are just finding ways of doing 'little more' than the others.

We need a new model that scales.