“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”
—Winston Churchill
Success breeds a unique anxiety. For iconic brands, the fear isn’t failure – it’s irrelevance. Once you’ve created something beloved, how do you keep it fresh without breaking what made it resonate in the first place.
Take the iPhone. It launched as a revolution: a phone, an iPod, and a web browser rolled into one. But revolutions are hard to repeat. Apple shifted from radical innovation to refinement – sharper screens, better cameras, sleeker designs. Each update offered just enough novelty to sustain our interest, while preserving the essence of the product.
Yet even this strategy now feels tired. Recent models seem incremental. As AI emerges as the next frontier, Apple’s magic – the sense that it knows what we want before we do – is at risk of growing stale.
Tesla follows a similar pattern. It wasn’t just an innovation; its early models felt like a glimpse of the future: silent torque, minimalist interiors, over-the-air updates; it felt like driving tomorrow. But that “tomorrow” is now today. The novelty has faded. Tesla’s challenge is no longer to invent tomorrow, but to avoid becoming yesterday.
This isn’t merely a branding issue. It speaks to something deeper: the human mind’s simultaneous craving for familiarity and novelty. Neuroscientists call it the “Goldilocks zone” of attention – not too predictable, not too chaotic. Just novel enough to keep us engaged.
Malcolm Gladwell, in Blink, recounts how music executives introduced unconventional tracks to mainstream audiences. When unfamiliar songs played first, listeners often disliked them – not due to poor quality, but due to their strangeness. Yet when those same songs were inserted between well-loved hits, they found more acceptance. We’re more willing to embrace change when it enters dressed in the clothes of the familiar.
This paradox – our desire for both stability and surprise – is ancient. Judaism has embraced it for millennia. The Torah remains unchanged, yet we are commanded to experience it daily as if it were new: “Shekol yom yihiyu b’eineichem kechadashot” (“Each day, it should be in your eyes as new”). As the Kotzker Rebbe observed, “The Torah doesn’t change – but you do.”
Consider Moshe and the rock. The people cry out for water. G-d instructs Moshe to speak to the rock, but instead he strikes it, as he had done decades earlier. Water flows, yet G-d rebukes him: “You did not trust Me to sanctify Me in the eyes of the people.” Why such severity? Because what once felt miraculous now felt routine. This generation had grown up with water from rocks! They had experienced it for forty years! Even miracles can become mundane. Sanctity requires freshness. A shift from striking to speaking could have reawakened their sense of wonder. The miracle didn’t need to be grander – just different.
This is the first lesson in sustaining relevance: change need not mean reinvention. Often, subtle modulation is enough to renew the familiar.
Relationships reflect this too. G-d tells the Jewish people, “V’erastich li le’olam” (“I will betroth you to Me forever”). The term erusin refers to the initial stage of marriage – a period of anticipation, curiosity, and attentiveness. It suggests emotionally fresh love.
Why evoke erusin in an eternal bond? Because enduring relationships need modulation. Thoughtful variation – an unexpected compliment, a subtle shift in routine, a spontaneous outing – keeps connection alive. Not constant novelty, but the right dose of it. Love is sustained not through reinvention, but through reawakening.
In the end, though, novelty is not the goal – it’s the trigger. Its real purpose is to awaken our attention.
And that leads to a second lesson: attention is the engine of novelty.
When the angels visit Avraham, they ask, “Where is Sarah, your wife?” Though they already know, Rashi explains they ask to prompt Avraham to notice her modesty anew. Novelty can come not from the new, but from seeing the known with fresh eyes.
This idea is woven into daily Jewish prayer. In Modim, we thank G-d “for Your miracles that are with us each day…morning, noon, and night.” The goal isn’t to uncover hidden marvels but to notice the visible ones. To experience the sunrise not as routine, but as a gift.
The kohen gadol modeled this attitude. Each day, he brought the same mincha offering that a new priest would bring on their first day. It was a ritual reminder to approach each day as if it were the beginning – not because the world had changed, but because he chose to see it differently.
Jeff Bezos expressed this through Amazon’s “Day 1” philosophy. He urged employees to operate each day as if it were still Day 1, the first day: curious, alert, and open to possibility. Day 2, he warned, was stasis – followed by irrelevance. His aim wasn’t relentless change, but relentless attention. Innovation doesn’t always require a new direction, just a renewed perspective.
In essence, Bezos hoped to preserve erusin long after nisuin (the stage of marriage that follows erusin, marked by permanence and routine) had begun. Not to stay immature, but to stay alive.
This is the heart of enduring relevance: attention without change becomes stale; change without attention feels hollow.
To last – in business, in love, or in faith – is not to chase constant novelty or cling to the past. It is to know when to adapt and when to rediscover. Longevity lives in this quiet balance: between surprise and stability, between what changes and what we choose to notice anew.
