"If you don't try and improve, pay attention to the market, adapt, move, change, or at least maintain or build a moat, competition will inevitably want to have

"If you don't try and improve, pay attention to the market, adapt, move, change, or at least maintain or build a moat, competition will inevitably want to have what you've got. It's why capitalism works. If you get old, and don't satisfy your customers, someone else will." So, the Traditional Sake corporation example aside, I agree - you do need to have some improvement over time. This is not what public stockholders demand though. Public stockholders demand that intangibles be sacrificed in an attempt to improve tangibles. Sacrifice quality of service in an attempt to increase the profit margin. Sacrifice the lifetime of the product in an attempt to lower the RRP. This isn't improving the product, it's just moving things around. At best it's shifting market demographic in hope that the new demographic is more profitable, at worst it's burning your customers for a short-term windfall. The core issue here is that there are limits to what you can improve in a given timeframe, and if you don't respect those limits then you end up just making things worse. Management often just tells themselves otherwise and keeps pushing until they've already killed the golden goose. At that point, the lesson they've learnt is irrelevant - it's too late, customers are already leaving and their reputation is irreparably tarnished.