Adaptive Path Blog

In Geoffrey Moore’s very old post on Digital Ecosystems (I’m still catching up on 2006), he highlights the tension that emerges between the concept of “product” and “service” when your product is delivered online:

“Services Displace Products. In the digital world, as bits substitute for atoms, products are reconceived as services. This is the threat that Google poses against Microsoft.

Services companies still have not completely caught up with this. They tend to describe their offers as products, which, although convenient as a means for integrating them into traditional organizational thinking, profoundly misrepresents their dynamics and causes companies to miss whole dimensions of consumer experience, need and value.”

Now much of the rest of the post was just gobbly-gook to to me, but the mix-up between the notions of products and services felt very familiar. When a service is created online, it’s often still sold as a product: how it’s packaged, priced, and then how it’s delivered.

One easy example of a missing dimension of customer experience is surprise. Off-line services have those well-timed surprises that aren’t built into online services. You get a lollipop at the barber, an occasional free drink at your favorite bar, the revealing of your entrée at dinner. Perhaps we’re working so hard at delivering the expected that we forget to plan for the unexpected?”

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 3:40 pm and is filed under Experience design, Product Design, Service Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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