The technology product life cycle is a journey of creating and destroying Wealth. It progresses through the dynamics of creation and destruction. Yes, the urgency is the driver of the product invention; but that is not sufficient for its evolution, forming a technology product lifecycle. In this evolution, technology products grow and migrate across the boundaries of firms and industries—turning even inventors into importers. In a competitive market, technology products are in a race of survival and growth. Not all of them succeed in keep growing. Some of them get stunted, while weaker ones run the risk of being swallowed by more powerful ones. Furthermore, not all of them succeed in ferreting profitable revenue from the market. Surprisingly, more than 70% of technology products retire without generating profit.
Technology products are like living things. They are born in a primitive form. Like many living creatures, they grow, reach adulthood, mature, and recreate through self-destruction. Along with the evolution, technology product lifecycles take varying shapes. At the core of the formation and evolution is the accumulation of knowledge and growth of technology core. Knowledge is like nutrients for the growth of technology products. But knowledge supply does not continue in a linear fashion. Besides, in a competitive market, technology product life cycles are shaped through the turbulence of creation and destruction, making the previous knowledge base obsolete.
Stages of the product lifecycle: taking the shape of the episodic model
Product lifecycle goes through four major stages: (i) formation or birth, (ii) ramping up phase, (iii) reaching maturity, and (iv) recreation.
At birth, every technology product emerges in primitive form, creating a very little willingness to pay. Invariably, the journey begins at a loss. For turning the loss into profit, the product must rapidly advance in quality improvement and cost reduction. It takes place through Incremental Innovation and the release of successive better versions. However, irrespective of the greatness, every product reaches maturity. To overcome the growth limitation, innovators succeed in recreating them by changing the technology core. Hence, the product lifecycle model takes an episodic form of evolution in helping customers to get jobs done increasingly better.
Product lifecycle begins with urgency, knowledge accumulation, and technology development:
Technology product invention goes through a long journey. The invention of the radio, the television, the camera, and many other products took more than 100 years. In many cases, the genesis is in tinkering and Craftsmanship. But systematic knowledge accumulation and technology development is essential for giving proper forms to them. For example, tinkering-based experimentation indicated the possibility of producing light from electricity and developing internal combustion engine-based automobiles. But to reach the shape of valuable products, there was a long journey of knowledge accumulation and technology development. Besides, an accidental outcome also gives birth to the technology products. For example, Microwave Oven got invented from unexpected observation. There are also instances where customized solutions’ development leads to the birth of technology products. For instance, in order to wake him up at 4 am for the job, Levi Hutchins developed an alarm clock in 1787.
Evolution through incremental advancement and sustaining innovation:
Upon getting birth, every technology product faces the barrier of diffusion and generating profitable revenue. Fortunately, the advancement of the underlying technology and increasing knowledge about customers’ preferences keep advancing products. Incremental improvement, as new features and refinement of existing ones, leads to higher willingness to pay among growing customers. Sometimes, such advancement also leads to decreasing costs. Furthermore, innovators are compelled to keep releasing successive better versions to sustain innovations in a competitive market. Through the process, sometimes, a product grows by grabbing others. For example, the smartphone has swallowed many discrete products as its features, such as the camera. Hence, products rapidly keep growing. Consequently, every product reaches maturity, slowing down further progression.
Product lifecycle’s recreation through reinvention: the creative wave of destruction and Disruptive innovation
Interestingly, along with maturity, an undercurrent starts forming, creating the opportunity of overcoming the limitations of maturity. The following path of growth of the product lifecycle begins through recreation out of self-destruction. Innovators proceed to reinvent products by changing the technology core. For example, Television went through a series of reinventions. Similarly,
Edison’s light bulb got reinvented due to the change of the energy-hungry filament by LED chips. However, invariably, reinventions surface in an inferior form, keeping the potential latent. If the underlying technology core is amenable to progression, this new wave grows and takes over the market of mature products, generating the effect of Creative Destruction. In some instances, the incumbent producers of mature products fail to switch to the emerging wave, suffering from the effect of disruptive innovations.
Due to the disruptive effect, often, new entrants succeed in snatching away the business from incumbent producers. As a result, recreation out of reinvention also leads to the migration of products across the boundaries of firms and countries. For example, smartphones migrated from Nokia to Apple due to reinvention. Similarly, Television migrated from the USA to Japan.
Product lifecycle management:
Irrespective of the greatness, the product lifecycle is fraught with uncertainties. Sources of uncertainties include (i) technology, (ii) customers’ preferences, (iii) competition response, (iv) supply chain, and (iv) externality factors like infrastructure and 3rd part plugins. Such reality poses a grave challenge to management to interpret cause-effect relations, predict the unfolding future, and set targets for incremental advancement, sustaining innovation and reinvention. To address those targets, management must overcome the challenge of acquiring and maintaining technology capability and ideas, developing the supply chain, ensuring synchronized advancement with component suppliers, and so on. Among many other challenges, management faces innovators’ Dilemma to respond to reinvention waves. Often such a dilemma leads to suffering from disruptive effects, leading to the loss of products to new entrants.
Product lifecycle examples:
There are many lessons to learn from the lifecycles of products around us. For example, the journey of Edison’s light bulb invention and destruction offers us a lesson of evolution and migration of products. Similarly, the reinvention of the camera provides us with a lesson of disruptive innovation. The evolution and migration of television offer us a great lesson of the episodic model of the product lifecycle. Similarly, the evolution of the iPhone as a seasonal crop is an excellent example of the evolution of products through sustaining innovation. On the other hand, Japan’s success in leading being a follower reveals the challenges of retaining the success and opportunities in taking over the edge from the leaders.
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