Two years ago a new venture was founded in the deep pockets of China. COVID Corp. has since become a staple of our communities. Indeed, one in five people in Europe has used their products. We do hate this corporation and thus we have built counterfeits that so far have been much more successful than the original products by the evil corporation.
As every good firm, COVID Corp excels at managing the exploration-exploitation dilemma. It looks for niche markets where counterfeits have not yet arrived and if starts to try out new product lines. The first product line came from a wet market in China, the former headquarters. But as time went by many other variants have been developed.
Some variants are easier to spread by Breath of Mouth (BoM), some require the customers to engage in investing in complements such as ICUs and ventilators. Young people tend to enjoy the COVID products pure but the older and more at risk, the more compliments people end up acquiring to endure their COVID experience.
Clearly, as with every good company, old products remain in manufacturing for a while. You never know how the industry will develop. As the Delta product grew in popularity, its customer base became harder to find. COVID Corp did try to adapt and hundreds of sub-variants of Delta emerged in the past years as local R&D engineers tried to make the Delta product change more of our lives. Alas, the Delta wave was left and a new disruptive idea came to dominate the market.
COVID Corp is indeed good at self-cannibalization. The new product Omicron is a true disruption a là O.G. Christensen. It is way worse than the prior product. The customer uses it for a shorter and in. doing so requires fewer compliments. Even the key characteristics of COVID have changed, now one notices it in one's neck and not on one's nose.
Omicron by COVID Corp is a new corporate venture, yet its revenues have grown much faster than its parent company. Had the research labs come up with Omicron before the counterfeits came to life, who knows what partnerships COVID Corp could have made.
Unfortunately for COVID Corp, the new product is known to be of a lower quality, it spreads further and more easily but remains with you for a shorter time. Whilst previous versions had many people succumbing to the Premium Long COVID subscription program, and many other complements. Omicron is more of a week-long experience. Long gone is the prestige of the Long COVID Club and fewer customers invest in the products available in the COVID App store, ICUs and ventilator use remain well below their usage during the much smaller Delta wave.
Due to the weakness of the new variant, our governments are calling off most measures against COVID Corp. We are still asked to get our free counterfeits, but other measures to limit our acquisition of the evil corp's products are going away. Now we are just given five days to enjoy its embrace before being allowed back into society. Long are the days of multiple weeks of isolation after testing negative for the first time. The nerve!
As proof of this, last Thursday, by following government regulations and not breaking any rule, I managed to acquire a fully new copy of Omicron by COVID Corp. Rest assured, I have already three counterfeits from different suppliers to be safe, but the appeal of the new Omicron line completely bypassed my willpower and I succumbed to its temptation. Omicron, doesn't it sound marvelous?
In the first days, I felt its cold embrace. Painful to the touch, and settling in my back. As time goes by I fell prey to COVIDs partnership with Kleenex, tiny blue packets now adorn my house. Today came the desired mark. After dozens of trials, I am now a member of the Double Stripe Club. C and T, I have waited so long to read these letters and as they come, so does another staple a warm feeling in my throat; the new feature added to the 2022 variant of COVID Corp. It is unclear how my COVID experience will go about. Indeed, this is the fourth product I own of this type, thus some of the thunder was indeed stolen from the evil corp. But for a biweekly tester, it is a somewhat bittersweet experience.
The groundbreaking success of COVID Corp ensures that new products will enter our market. We know there is a small tweak to Omicron, BA.2. But next in line is Pi, one of the most beloved letters of the Greek Alphabet. We can all imagine that COVID Labs are working on the prospects of their new innovation. Be it revamping Long COVID subscriptions, or working harder to keep complementors in their ecosystem. This entrepreneurial orchestrator is sure to bring something new to our doorsteps in mid-2022.
