The Binder Clip: Design for Versatility?

Lifehacker has a (very old) ode to the  standard binder clip as an office omnitool,  lauding its ability to adapt to an impressive number of uses.  And that brings up an interesting design goal, which might be called "design for versatility."  With this goal, it's not about optimizing a single use, but keeping the design so basic - that is, free from application-specific features - that its few general features can be used in many situations.  An analogue would be the paper clip: it may be possible to improve the design of the traditional wire paperclip.  But would it then lose the ability to be used as a general-purpose wire, a pin to eject stuck optical drives and iPhone SIM cards, and MacGyver's multitool.  Sometimes it's better to design several "products" pretty well than a single product perfectly?