I think it requires awareness about how deep the value of your product goes. E.g. I knew the creators of a very popular cable show (Queer Eye for the Straight G

I think it requires awareness about how deep the value of your product goes. E.g. I knew the creators of a very popular cable show (Queer Eye for the Straight Guy) and despite surprising overnight mainstream success they were remarkably clear-eyed about how long the phenomenon was likely to last and how to exploit it over that time period. Other shows in related genres like Top Chef or Project Runway were capable of a longer life because their premises inherently support a richer variety of stories. Both kinds of properties can be valuable. Angry Birds is predicated on a great, clever irony: fuzzy, harmless-looking creatures with facial expressions and behavior of furious vengeance. But it doesn't seem like there's a lot of deeper/substantive places to go with that: a single emotional register is quite limiting for storytelling. The odd thing is that Rovio's actions are a mix of rapid exploitation (all the brand-sapping tie-ins, not embedding the birds in a bigger 'universe') and enterprise building (huge headcount, freemium model).