We will all be familiar with “triangle of options”: in business there are three variables in any business transaction: Cost, Quality and Time. If you want things faster, Cost or quality must suffer. If you want things more feature rich, time and cost will increase. You get it? Any 2 from 3.
Well, in his book FL!P, Peter Sheahan suggests we’ve moved on. In his words, it’s FAST, GOOD, CHEAP pick three then add something else! Getting what you need is yesterday. Today is getting what you want. And too much is never enough!
Sheahan states: Today's customers increasingly think AND not OR. In a world full of oversupply, global under-demand and non-stop technical change, they get more of what they want faster and faster all the time.
Fast is not fast enough
Fast today is not fast enough for tomorrow, good today is not good enough for tomorrow and cheap today is not cheap enough for tomorrow. Competitive advantages quickly turn into competitive necessities that rivals can copy and adapt for themselves.
Technology (see earlier blog on Four Forces) is speeding up the world and making just about everything other than closing lift doors happen faster and faster all the time. And it is not only technology, when it comes to the youngest customers (and staff in relation to their careers) no demand on speed of delivery feels unreasonable.
Innovation is the lifeblood of businesses. It allows new growth as the old wood rots and breaks off. Companies must continue to innovate, offering aptly designed - design is claimed to be the new business model - user-friendly - remember Mick? - and dependable products or services for customers when and where they want them. Change isn’t inevitable, its intrinsic.
Look at the growth of the Freemium business model. For the majority of its users, Skype charges nothing for the service yet provides the full featured and regularly updated product, not just a shrunk down, basic, feature reduced version. Look at Google. What would we do without it? How would we search and find the data we need - instantly? Look at Wikipedia - facts on everything - regularly updated - and free.
If you are price dependent you are at risk. Sooner or later in this technology supported world, someone will come along and pull the price rug from under your feet and re-invent the entire industry. Need an example? Watch out for major changes in the printed-word world.
Table stakes are getting bigger because of the feedback loop between increasing compression of time and space, increasing complexity and ambiguity, increasing transparency and accountability for actions that have to be performed in conditions of high uncertainty and increasing customer expectations.
You must not only ensure that you are fast enough, good enough and cheap enough for today and tomorrow, you must also offer customers something else as well.
Sheahan adds: Companies have to do more to win customers than offer a dependable, good-quality, reasonably priced product or service. That’s what ordinary companies do. Extraordinary companies do something else. They realise that in an oversupplied market, competitive advantage will increasingly be built on elements once considered superficial. The small stuff. Make it sweat!
Bill - somehow my last comment didn't get posted, so I'm back again!
It's so true - I can't tell you how many times I've listened to the "fast, good and cheap: pick two". With unlimited choice, and a playing field that has never been more level, having all three and then some is what's needed to win.
Thanks for the kick in the pants - the book is now on my list!
Posted by: steve cunningham | 08/31/2010 at 02:39 AM
Steve - thanks for your comments (including the one still in the ether!)
No more Meat Loaf business. Two out of three is bad!
Glad to add to your reading list,
Bill
Posted by: Bill @simplifywithus | 08/31/2010 at 03:53 PM