With time some companies learn to understand latent needs of their customers and at the same time there are other companies which on the back of their past successes and continued supremacy in the market place loose the ability to track changing tastes of their customers. There are companies which introduce innovative business models and continuously fine tune them to enhance their ability to create economic value and yet on the other hand there are companies that are struck with their once successful formula and get wedded with it, focusing all their energies looking inwards around the established practices to find the solution to the problems caused by changes elsewhere.

Who is responsible for this change? Where doest it start from? How does it happen? These are some of the questions that each of the corporations in the world ponders over today. The answer is as industry players we ourselves and our customer chain together are driving the change – Change is natural. Change is all around us – all the while. It has basically to do with the human ability to expand the horizon of thoughts and the unique instinct of moving up the ladder of expectations.

Ladder of expectations
As can be seen from the ladder of expectations, few innovative firms or new entrants in their bid to search for unexplored space in the competitive landscape come up with an innovative product or service which meets “till then un-spelt” needs of some segments of customers. This ensures huge economic benefits for these firms as “first mover advantage”. Remote control for television is one such example in case. Other players in the industry now chip in to retain / regain their market shares and try to offer similar product / service / facility to larger cross section of customers. This not only acts as an important means of satisfaction for the customers but also directs their behaviours and expectations in the long run. This results in “past innovation and a delighter” to become an integrated part of the product and included in the product definition – a great differentiator gets commoditized as competitors offerings include the feature as “default” and customers start perceiving the feature as being part of “basic definition”. At this stage the next rung of the “ladder of expectation” takes over. But then, as always there are those who back their intimate knowledge of customers’ expectations with their ability to innovate and create value for themselves and the customers on a continuous basis and find their way to a new “delighter”. The point to note here is that once an innovative feature – the delighter – over a period of time becomes an integral part of the product specification and finally ends up as “taken for granted” item in a product.

Drivers of change & human instinct
Human instinct of pushing ahead with better and improved ways of making things happen is at the heart of change that we see around us today. It is the same instinct that manifests itself as technological innovations, competition between companies and now competition between nations to maximize their pie of economic benefits of world trade - globalization. These are in fact the factors cited by economists and industrialists all over the world, which drive change today.