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06/05/08 Have We Over Innovated? No.
SINGAPORE - Telecomms disruptor, Pat, asks “Have we over innovated?”…
The average customer is so far down the line that all of us as voice/data operators need to give them a little time to catch up with us.
…and what, stop innovation? No!
If the consumer has been abandoned by us so far down the line it means we have been blinded by our passion. Early adopters become comfortable hooking wires, swapping sims, making stuttery calls, testing and poking the system - because that’s their passion. It excites them to know they can voice-dial South Africa over TCP/IP on their noise-cancelling bluetooth headset with just their neighbours stolen wifi connection - and do it for free. They care.
Consumers don’t care.
Consumers don’t care about their connection protocol or how many saved pence they made by dialling a number to be called back cheaper. It’s all hassle. In their eyes, their phone is for speaking to people on like their watch is for reading the time. All they want, is for it to just work as it always has.
Comparing it to an inkjet printer, that beige box that prints out a page every now & again. Would you care if the ink was a few pence cheaper if you had to refill it yourself? Would you upgrade if it did an extra page per minute? Would you change your behaviour and remember to queue all print items until the end of the day instead of instant [File][Print] if you were told it ‘improved tonal ink quality’ that way?
Me neither, but I’m not passionate about printers.
So how far ahead of the loop are the early adopters? Far.
It gets worse too. the innovation rate will speed up. Technology will race ahead into everything from your fridge to your iron and you will rely on your category experts for advice on the latest model, methods, trends unless it’s your passion. You will expect all of these ancillary tools to just work - just like I do with my printer.
For commercial success in the telecommunications world, companies will have to be careful not to get caught in the middle “great tech, hard to use”. The true innovation will either completely disrupt the market with a new form factor “great tech, intuitive to use” or will innovate within the behaviours consumers are comfortable with on their own handset “great tech, same to use”.
-Robin.
(Image Credit: New vs Old - real innovation side-by-side in Singapore. By Author.)
Tags: innovation, over innovation, pat phelan, telecomms, telecommunications
1 Comment
07/05/08 gregory
yep, gonna be two races soon… those descended from the ones now who can afford good food, water, tech, education, health care, and the ones descended from the worker drones who never will have enough of the good stuff, and are stoned out on tv. planet earth, the way it is, eh?
