Trade Off

Just finished a great book called Trade-Off by Kevin Maney. The basic idea of this book is summed up in the convenience/fidelity graph.

All products fit in one of three categories:

1. The Fidelity Belly. These are most mainstream products that are ordinary. Medium fidelity/medium convenience.

2. High Fidelity. These are products that have high performance but may not be convenient or cheap. These are high end products -- think of Tiffany.

3. High Convenience. These are very convenient and are cheaper and/or lower performance than the high fidelity products. Think of Walmart.

Where do you want your product to be. You would think that you would want to be high convenience/high fidelity (The Fidelity Mirage). Turns out that is not possible. You do not want to be in the belly either. To stand out you want to be high fidelity/low convenience or low fidelity/high convenience. Of course with the rapid change of technology, the landscape changes rapidly so it is hard to stay in either of these areas for long.