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Think of any of the highly creative, innovative products on the market today. Think about Google, the iPhone, Tesla. Think about the most influential artist that’s ever existed. People like Picasso and Elvis Presley. They’re all wildly different, but they all share a common link: They represent ideas that are not well-rounded.

When I say “well-rounded” I’m referring to the tendency to cover up our weaknesses. No creative idea is perfect. It’s only because of these imperfections that creative ideas can evolve over time. You cannot improve something that’s already perfect. When you embrace one idea, you are, by necessity, embracing the worst parts of that idea as well.

It’s easy to see this when you look at Google’s homepage. It’s essentially blank. That is a creative choice that the people at Google made, and it’s shaped the website ever since. Contrast this with Yahoo’s homepage. Yahoo wants to tell you the weather, the political news, and how the stock market is doing. Google has embraced the idea of being lopsided as a company. They’ve both acknowledged and encouraged this lopsidedness by leaving their website nearly blank. They focus on achieving only one thing for their users, but their promise is that they’ll do it far better than anyone else can.

Yahoo is trying to be everything to everybody. They’re trying to make sure that their homepage is well-rounded. They’re trying to cover up the weakness of their idea by adding more and more to it.

Why do we visit Google far more often than Yahoo if it’s Yahoo that has less weakness? We like stuff… and Yahoo has more stuff. This should be a no-brainer. This clearly isn’t the case though. If I told you to “Google” something, you wouldn’t bat an eye at the request. That’s normal. But if I told you to “Yahoo” it, you’d laugh… and if I told you to use Ask Jeeves you’d be really concerned.

Why do we love such a lopsided company? Everything is a trade-off. Google has accepted their weakness in one area because they can then spend more time focusing on getting the good parts right. The time you spend covering your weakness is time you cannot spend magnifying your strengths. Lopsided companies are loved not “despite” their lopsidedness, but BECAUSE of it.

When we want to search for something on the internet, we open Google. When we want the weather we open an app on our phone. When we want political news we open a different app. Whenever we need anything, we go directly to lopsided places. This is especially true in today’s modern age where it’s easy to find these lopsided companies. I don’t need or value Yahoo’s weather forecast, because I can instantly go to an app that cares only about the weather. Why would I trust someone who’s stretching themselves too thin? How could someone who cares about everything ever possibly be as good as someone who cares deeply about a single thing?

We love lopsidedness as consumers, but we hate it as creative people. It isn’t easy to be lopsided. It isn’t easy to know that you’re sacrificing a weakness so that you can concentrate on your strengths. This is why so many companies and artists fall into this trap. There’s always pressure to add one more thing to a creative product. We assume that adding something good to the mix will automatically make our idea better, but that’s not the case. Creativity is more like cooking. Just because you like two different ingredients doesn’t automatically mean they should be mixed into the same cake. Spicy food tastes good by itself. Sweet things taste good by themselves. So do sour foods. You cannot be everything to everyone. You can only be the perfect thing for someone.

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