Its funny to see this phenomenon repeat itself again and again in corporate America. Company X manages to become successful due to bunch of amorphous reasons. Some academic decides to reverse-engineer this messy process into a neatly packaged theory that has some kernal of obviousness at the heart of it. Then the academia-consultant-management complex takes it over and starts evangelizing it for $$ to companies and contexts that are only tangentially similar to the original company. Obviously the cut-paste theory fails to take hold in its new home. Rinse repeat till a new fad comes in. Lean, Agile, Design thinking...
