Comment by 21p
10 years ago
hindsight is 20/20. It would be quite easy for a team of developers and product managers to get together to discuss "how we take what we have and extend it to cover the new use case" rather than "what is the best approach for the new use case".
But even before reuse, the "DNA" point can't be overlooked, though. Success breeds a belief that "our differentiators" need to be considered and baked into subsequent products. More often than not, those constraints lead to situations where you're fitting a square peg into a round hole, as with Skype and P2P messaging.
What saves some companies from this is a core DNA that can be interpreted in a very liberal and malleable fashion. For instance, Amazon is about distribution--be it products, bits, computing power. Facebook is about social connection (not P2P or a particular narrowing of tech). Of course, maybe that's just survivorship bias...no one keeps a good directory of the graveyard of corporate DNA that was as similarly broad.
Now whether that is a function of articulating flexible DNA, or the flexibility of the decision makers...I don't know. Either way, fixed mindsets close down adaptivity to new opportunities.