Summary: If \(L : Y \rightarrow Y\) is a bounded linear map on a Banach space \(Y\), the “radius of the essential spectrum” or “essential spectral radius” \(\rho (L)\) of \(L\) is well-defined and there are well-known formulas for \(\rho (L)\) in terms of measures of noncompactness. Now let \(C \subset D\) be complete cones in a normed linear space (\(X, \|\cdot\|\)) and \(f : C \rightarrow C\) a continuous map which is homogeneous of degree one and preserves the partial ordering induced by \(D\). We prove (see Section 2) that various obvious analogs of the formulas for the essential spectral radius for the case \(f : C \rightarrow C\) have serious defects, even when \(f\) is linear on \(C\). We propose (see (3.5)) a definition for \(\rho C (f)\), the “cone essential spectral radius of \(f\),” which avoids these difficulties. If \({\tilde r}_{C}(f)\) denotes the (Bonsall) cone spectral radius of \(f\), we conjecture (see Conjecture 4.1) that if \(\rho_{C}(f) < {\tilde r}_{C}(f)\), then there exists \(u \in C\setminus \{0\}\) with \(f(u) = ru\), where \(r := r_C (f)\). If \(f\) satisfies certain additional conditions (for example, if \(f\) is a compact perturbation of a map which is linear on \(C\)), we obtain the conclusion of the conjecture; but, in general, we observe (Remark 4.7) that the conjecture is intimately related to old and difficult conjectures in asymptotic fixed point theory. In Section 5, we briefly discuss extensions of generalized max-plus operators which were our original motivation and for which Conjecture 4.1 is already nontrivial.