I absolutely agree with this (this basically spills the beans [1] starting on page 21), but I'd bet good money most of this thinking originates from a single so

I absolutely agree with this (this basically spills the beans [1] starting on page 21), but I'd bet good money most of this thinking originates from a single source and the others are just copycats. The reason why is that usually you can find one company/product that's "closer to the stream" in terms of purity and quality, while the others are noticeable knockoffs. For example, a few years back there was a craze around workout wristbands (Jawbone Up, Fitbit, etc) and I'll never forget seeing Under Armour try to ship their own clone [2] and shouted (loud enough to startle the people I was with, not the rest of the store), in their store, "why the hell would you do that?!" The reason for the outburst was that I imagined the expenditure to make the thing—in terms of salaries, consultants, logistics, etc—dwarfed the actual sales (which any self-respecting CEO not caught in a mimetic haze would realize immediately). [1] https://ia800100.us.archive.org/5/items/SilentWeaponsForQuietWarsOriginalDocumentCopy/Silent%20Weapons%20for%20Quiet%20Wars%20Original%20Document%20Copy.pdf https://ia800100.us.archive.org/5/items/SilentWeaponsForQuie... [2] https://www.kohls.com/product/prd-2569108/under-armour-band-activity-tracker.jsp https://www.kohls.com/product/prd-2569108/under-armour-band-...