Ed is looking to boost revenue ahead of his company's expected IPO. He's taken to going out to customers to see if there's any way he can persuade them to take more product.
'Things seem promising when I go to a customer who tells me they have a several million a month requirement for a particular IC - if we are prepared to develop it', writes Ed in his diary, 'he gives me the spec and I head back to the office to see the product manager.'
'"Can we make a product to this spec?" I ask the product manager in charge of the relevant section.'
'He looks at the spec sheet and says "Yes. Why?""'
'"Because I've identified a customer who has a several million a month requirement for it", I tell him.'
'The product manager doesn't look impressed. "Hold on. Let me make a couple of phone calls", he says.'
'Half an hour later he comes back into my office. His smug look tells me this is not good news.
"I've got mates at ST and ADI who tell me they've been asked to develop an IC to exactly the same spec", he says, "so we'd spend half a million dollars developing the thing, then the customer will play us off against eachother and screw us on price. It's a stinker Ed."'
'Oh dear', confides Ed to his diary, 'I suppose everyone in the building will know about this by tonight.'
'Still it's only 270 days till we IPO, and then I'm out of here with so much loot those product managers will be spitting tin-tacks.'
In the real dilbert world, both the CEO and the product manager would both be clueless enough to have said yes to a chip that wasnt possible to do in any reasonable timeframe.