My Toothpaste Tube Does Wi-Fi!

Imagine that your company, wanting to hop onto the IoT bandwagon, creates a tube of toothpaste that does wi-fi!

Unfortunately, the wi-fi connection fails 30% of the time.


Even worse, you designed the tube so that the cap won't come off unless the wi-fi is connected!


OOPS!


This is NOT an example of Strategic Simplicity®.  

You've not only added a lot of complexity and risk, for a marginal upside (who needs their toothpaste tube to upload information?) but, even worse, the most important function of your product is at the mercy of a much less important one. 

This is obviously an exaggerated case yet, after almost 30 years of working in business, management, and technology, I've seen countless examples where product and marketing teams are their own worse enemies—adding features and functionality which reduce the effectiveness and utility of otherwise very powerful business solutions.