Is constant product development good corporate strategy? - Yes

“Familiarity breeds contempt’. The old adage is so true for aspirational consumer products such as personal gadgets and cars. For what happens when there is stagnation in new product development, there can be no better example than the Ambassador — a car that ruled the roads two decades ago and has now all but vanished even from our memories.

Similarly, forget Sci-Fi digital add-ons; if only the pressure cooker had been part of the clique of ‘fashionable’ kitchen appliances and if only its buyers were a bit more demanding, we’d have by now at least gotten cookers with handles that stayed bolted.

Technological progress and obsolescence are brothers-in-arms. One needs the other and one leads to the other. The products that we covet the most, including cars and personal gadgets, have had the most rapid development, driven by a healthy mix of consumer demands and the invention of new technology.

Cars are safer, more efficient and offer more value today than ever before, thanks to the technological progress that the automobile industry has witnessed. And much of those innovations in safety and performance have come in the second half of the century simply because of the increase in the number of buyers.

For a starker example of the benefits of new model development and the advantages of technological obsolescence, we just need to look at the mobile handset market.

It is less than a decade-and-a-half since the mass adoption of mobile handsets started around the world. But the statistics about the kind of multi-tasking that it has enabled is staggering.

Consider these:

This year , the number of mobile internet devices connected to the Web worldwide will exceed the number of humans on the planet, according to networking giant Cisco.

More than 12 per cent of the world’s population is active on some instant messaging services.

There is about $2000 worth of transactions being done on eBay every second and a billion deals everyday.

From being mere voice communicators, mobile devices now act as cameras, media consumption devices, social networking and shopping platforms, gaming consoles and, increasingly, even as the primary computing device.

There is more to come in terms of features, and in the future the handset could become your virtual medical assistant, digital identity proof, and a virtual credit card. This level of progress in the form of new tech and newer applications would not have come about without the constant development of new models and a certain degree of ‘planned obsolescence’.

New product development leads to increased competition and more choice, a healthy move eventually for the consumer.

After all, as they say Bill Gates’ house was designed on a Macintosh!

Read also: >Is constant product development good corporate strategy? - No

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