Marketing Controls Innovation
It seems that over the last 30 years innovation is all but gone except in a few areas. Like "cars" are not really innovative, they are just a new shape and color and voila. It's like Microsoft controllers for the XBOX One-- they keep marketing "a million different color combinations" as though it is some kind of advancement when all they have done is changed the color. Outside of quantum computing it seems like most technology today is mostly packaging or repackaging with minor incremental improvements. Does anybody else feel this way?
Why blame marketing for the fault of product? Marketing's role is to drive pipeline and brand awareness through payload. When there is no payload, you get color combinations.
not blabbing marketing. marketing is the life blood of any business and misunderstood by most. It seems that something is stifling innovation. But what? Computers work essentially the same way (display, keyboard, chair) that they did 40 years ago when micro computers were developed. We could actually have Tony Stark experiences of we would eliminate the display and put VR goggles on our heads that can superimpose imagery like HUD over reality and the movement could be monitored with a Kinect-like device. How much faster we could work on 3D and think about how much more secure our work could be. But nobody has done it. Virtual conference calls would be amazing. Why are we not driving cars that run on water. the technology has been proven many many times. it's not engineering preventing true advancement. It is something else. What do you think? Greed?
The reason I suggested Marketing is because everything a company does is based on ROI. And so they will market what is the highest ROI which typically means low cost production, high sale price. And Marketing is used to manipulate the public into wanting something that they neither need nor benefit from. Whereas true innovation is often expensive and risky. There are other forms of ROI, but today shareholders want immediate returns, rather than term returns which are much more risky. And they use manipulative marketing to engage the consumer into believing they need or will benefit from something they will not because it is easier to sell them this color of this shape than it is to develop something better that they may not be ready for. Today the automobile is more than a century old and it operates arguably the same as it did when it was invented. At the time people thought you would disintegrate if you went faster than 60mph. Marketing had the ability to educate and create a desire. Today it manipulated rather than educates. Big difference.