page_title: Second product syndrome
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Second product syndrome / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: The entrance to Pixar's studio lot in Emeryville, California.
context_page_description: Second product syndrome is a business concept introduced by Steve Jobs in the documentary The Pixar Story. Steve Jobs describes the concept as when the company comes up with a very successful first product, it becomes more ambitious and boastful. The company then decides to go ahead with the second product without actually investigating and understanding the reason behind their first product's success. Therefore, the second product often ends up as a failure.
  Jobs stated his experience of second product syndrome at the technology company Apple as "I lived through Apple -the Apple II was incredibly successful and Apple III was a dud- and I've seen a lot of companies not make it through that."
context_section_description: The concept of second product syndrome was introduced by Steve Jobs during his time in Pixar, an American computer animation film studio under Disney Studios. The first movie introduced by Pixar was Toy Story which was a huge success at the time. After the movie, Pixar's ambition multiplied and the company was determined to prove Toy Story's success was not a one-time hit.  Pixar then decided its second film would be based on the insect and named the movie A Bug's Life. 
  The information about Pixar's second movie was leaked to the former employee of Disney Jeffrey Katzenberg who worked at DreamWorks at the time. Katzenberg then decided to use the same concepts of insects in their new movie Antz featuring a group of ants.  When accused by the furious Jobs of stealing Pixar's idea, Katzenberg admitted that he had sped up the production of the Antz as a way to compete against his former colleagues at Disney because DreamWorks’ first movie The Prince of Egypt was scheduled to be released for Thanksgiving 1998, which was on the same weekend as A Bug's Life. Katzenberg wanted to rush Antz into launch to put pressure on Pixar and compelled Pixar to change its release date for A Bug's Life. When received an offer from Katzenberg that DreamWorks would delay the production of Antz if Pixar would move A Bug's Life so it would not compete against The Prince of Egypt, Steve Jobs was determined and refused to change the movie's release date. Under great pressure, no one at Pixar backed down. A Bug's Life was  released at the beginning of October 1998, six weeks after DreamWorks released their movie Antz. A Bug's Life had a more epic plot and  achieved two times as much profit as Antz. 
  After the success of Pixar's second movie, Jobs recognised the importance of A Bug's Life's success. It not only beat Antz in the sales and profit, more importantly, it proved Pixar's success does not stop at its first product. Jobs later introduced the concept of the deadly second product syndrome for a company's second product and stated: "There is a classic thing in business, which is the second-product syndrome. I was very concerned about our second product. My feeling was,  if we got through our second film, we'd made it. The first one was the most risky, but after that, the second one was pretty close to it".
caption: Pixar animation studio
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