Conventional wisdom states that successful companies succeed when they make a good product for a reasonable price aimed at the average Jane or Joe. Right? But what if, instead of that, companies succeeded by either focusing on the high end or the low end, ignoring ‘the average consumer’ altogether? That might sound a surefire way for a company to self-destruct. But finding success through bypassing the middle is exactly what is being suggested by James Surowiecki in The New Yorker. Looking at companies like Apple on one end, and H&M and Ikea on the other, Surowiecki argues that the high- and…