I was engrossed in summarising the minutes of a just-concluded meeting. There was a knock on my door, It was my elder one. She had her #macbook in her hand & of course with a complaint that couldn’t wait. I inattentively nodded trying hard to multi-task.
“Pappa, there is something wrong with Zoom chat”, she declared, seizing my attention. I paused and turned towards her, now with full focus to what she was talking. She was referring to the chat option available in #Zoom Video Conferencing. Her problem was that she was looking for the contextual response to a message that #Whatsapp offers. She actually thought something was wrong with Zoom. I explained to her that it was not a bug and asked her to continue with her zoom call with her friend.
This conversation got me reflecting on how as PM’s we spend months defining, developing, and shipping new features. We market them as a premium value proposition to sell more/acquire new customers, or engage/retain users. Irony is that, the key indicator of success of any innovation is not how long it will remain a novelty. but how fast it transitions from being a nifty add-on to a plain vanilla. So much so that this becomes a must-have in every product in the category.
A key indicator of success of any innovation is not how long it will remain a novelty. but how fast it transitions from being a nifty add-on to a plain vanilla
Indeed, today’s nifty is tomorrow’s vanilla.
Image by Keveberon on Pixabay