Every few months I am invited by some technology companies to a major venue such as the Mercedes-Benz Arena in Shanghai to attend a news conference for the release of a new version of their products, for example, a new smartphone.

Even though most of the minor new features announced are often sneered at by some of the industry experts present, I was always fascinated by the phrase they used from time to time to define the new features: Product iteration.

To know more about the tech world to which I think I might be too much of a green hand, I clicked open an online marketplace and looked at the best-selling books of the month. Once again, I was caught by the buzzword of not only the tech industry but rather the whole business world today: Product iteration.