Providing Better Performance Isn’t Enough

Jun 20, 2008

Seth Godin posted some thoughts on the Amazon Kindle. Great ideas, as always, from him.

Here’s the part of the post that really struck me, though.

Word processing didn’t work because it was typing but a little
cheaper. It worked because it was better than typing. Email didn’t work
because it was mail but a little faster. It worked because it was
fundamentally better than snail mail…

blog it

It’s not about improving performance. Just an improved performance will not be enough to make people want to use your product.

It’s about making something that’s fundamentally different. Something that’s better, that redefines what the task is. As Guy Kawasaki puts it, it’s about jumping to the next curve.

Merely providing better performance isn’t enough.