Livewire: The Communications, Media and Entertainment Blog

It used to be that the business case for returns on investment in new products assumed a sufficient time window before the products became commoditized. However, the reality today is that products will perhaps burn out faster than the time it took to build them.

In this age of incremental innovation, customers are continually bombarded with technology and product literature from all quarters. They take instinctive calls to balance obsolescence and standards-conformance with real time benefit. The market could shift away from the provider by the time he goes from IPTV v1 to IPTV v2. Customer lock-in through subsidies and contracts will only go so far, before they are challenged by more nimble competition. Delays in innovation rollout almost certainly imply the need to completely leapfrog to the next iteration, and write-off any or all investment in the current cycle.

Why wait for a product cycle to mature before thinking of reducing costs from it to maintain profitability? Increasingly, the "China Price" is the only price. So a service provider has to learn how to build and run it cheaper from the start.

Telcos are re-evaluating their Concept-to-Market approaches, looking for ways to accelerate cycles beyond "buy-vs-build". Flexible product platforms, global talent pools and willingness of customers to participate in innovation can all be leveraged to bring products to market faster and with increased relevance.