As an MBA student I learned about the product life cycle, explaining how the conditions in which a product is sold changes over time as it moves through a succession of stages. While I didn’t have time to make a pretty graphic, I thought I’d take a crack at what the lifecycle of “cool” might look like.
You can see the main axis correlation between time and impact. The longer a product can keep its status of cool, the more of an impact it can make on a large scale.
Figuring out how to make something cool or viral is really the perfect storm, or a series of storms coming together at just the right time. One thing to notice is that the sustainability of a product or service crowned cool is much shorter than the in the traditional product lifecycle. I have also included a period for rapid decline since our modern, more prolific flow of information, means that an anti-cool meme can result in a product being dethroned at a much faster rate.
One thought that also occurred to me is how the ‘free’ business model works into all this.
Is it more difficult for free products and services to sustain cool? I would argue yes because customers have less buy-in. At the same time, free may also result in a cool product having a much more rapid growth period.
Your thoughts?
