Is scale the enemy of brand essence?

When brands lose their heads to growth, they put their core at risk

Growing too big to fail may be a desirable goal, but if brands end up diluting their core values to get there--well then they are setting themselves up for a bumpy ride. Be it hotels, fast moving consumer goods or telecom, the dangers of scaling up without protecting the essence of the brand are all around us.
 

Take for example, hospitality branding. In his 1933 novel Lost Horizon, James Hilton enchanted us with a fictional valley, a mystical paradise on earth. He called it Shangri-La.

Some scholars believe Hilton’s story finds it origins in Shambhala, a mythical paradise found in ancient