Why dream teams fail involves a lot of intangibles. There are plenty of implications here for marketing and branding. You can read about them in the latest Fortune Magazine (June 12). Still, in the exceptions category, George Steinbrenner's cherry picking has maintained the brand attributes of the New York Yankees for quite a while now. In business, of course, it's a different story. Dream teams are neither the stuff of dreams nor are they true "teams". They are constructs. Contrivances. A gaggle of people accustomed to thinking of themselves as first among equals. The Marine Corps has as good a handle on the concept as any organization anywhere: You have to be able to lead and follow. Get a group of people like that together and chances are you'll have a pretty good team. Which segues right into the brand mash-up of the week: ruminations on the advent of the "Appleberry". AAPL, maker of the iPod, and RIMM, maker of the Blackberry joining forces to create a musical PDA. Or would it be an mentally gifted iPod? No matter, ain't gonna happen. As one Valley wag put it, a misbegotten menage-a-trois: picture Steve Jobs in a three-way with the CEO tag-team at Research in Motion. This isn't a team, it's Celebrity Death Match.
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