It's been said that a definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different result.s Joel Spolsky points to the recently deceased Clear as an example of that kind of thinking:

Nobody at Clear did any thinking. They had a business model, the business model wasn't actually possible, everybody knew it, and they still plugged away at it. Thoughtless optimism. I don't know whether to salute 'em or laugh.

You see a lot of that sort of thing, and not just with startups. Established businesses are notorious for getting frozen into a plan that worked once, but is no longer feasible under changed market conditions. Consider DEC, or the entire music business. Or, the entire TV business right now, for that matter.

The problem is that most of us have a very hard time shifting our trains of thought. If something worked once, we keep doing it. Business ends up being an awful lot like the superstitious athlete who won't wash his socks, because he once won a race while wearing them.

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