A senior vice president at Yahoo! penned an internal document which has now become known as "The Peanut Butter Manifesto" which contains this quote,
He brings up a number of interesting points, but this whole issue of spreading ourselves too thin is one that I think a lot of small businesses face.I've heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular.
I hate peanut butter. We all should.
Full memo on The Wall Street Journal
I get the feeling (from conversations with some other small business owners) that a lot of people go, "Look money over there!" and want to cover that area of their industry too (or maybe it isn't even in their industry!), with the result being thinly spread people.
What's your experience of this? Do you find yourself spread over too many areas and not excelling in any one of them? Or are you so focussed that you are worried that a small market change could topple your whole business?
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