Back Seat Marketers

From the NYT Bits. The IIIP posted results from its world review of consumer perception on “innovation confidence” that future advancements will improve quality of life. The results, not surprisingly, showed that developing countries like UAE and India see continued value from further use of innovation while many areas of the EU and the US are less inclined to see the same value.

While at a conference a few years ago, I was introduced to the idea of “over-innovating”. While competition forces incremental improvements, a line gets crossed between improving for the user’s sake, and beating out the most recent introduction. Over time, these advancements cost more than they’re worth allowing disrupting players to come in with new business models and value propositions, typically based on completely different feature sets) pushing the leader out (=Honda/Toyota’s hybrid/efficiency v. GM/Ford’s SUV’s).