"The Procter & Gamble Company, the makers of Pringles, the #1 selling stacked potato crisp,...introduced Pringles Prints, an innovative snack that features a unique, fun design printed on every crisp.  The revolutionary Prints technology allows P&G to customize the crisps by printing words and images directly on the chip."
                                                                   --JunkFoodNews.net

Yes it's an example of open innovation, but do we really want potato chips with messages--customized or otherwise--printed on them? Are we willing to pay for them? Does this create economic welfare?

Mathematical ecologists have modeled the proliferation of species within an ecology, and find that the number of species grows relatively linearly. Over time, species come to depend on one another as predator and prey, and symbiont and symbiote. Eventually one species becomes a "keystone" species on which many depend. Sooner or later something happens to a keystone species and the total number of species in an ecology crashes. This cycle has been observed repeatedly over hundreds of millions of years.

Could the same happen to the number of SKUs in an economy? Printed Pringles are unlikely to be a keystone in any markets I can think of, but what about displacement of the CRT by flat panels? What about the displacement of the internal combustion engine? Can anyone think of a case of the number of SKUs or industries crashing?

And by the way, is "stacked potato crisp" the way to define your product into category leadership, or what?