I Could Have Been A Contender.

Effectively combining the attention-grabbing and neuromarketing themes of the past two days, the work of Harvard Business School's John Gourville quantifies why new offerings really do need to be remarkable.

The risk aversion of consumers and their investment in existing solutions means that your alternative needs to appear ten times as good as the status quo if it is to really catch on. Yes TEN times! Consumers overvalue products they own by a factor of three while product developers over-rate their products by a similar factor and the result is what he calls the "9X problem" which generates "a mismatch of 9 to 1 between what innovators think consumers want and what consumers actually want."

That makes you look at what you're trying to sell and the strength of supposedly vulnerable incumbents such as Microsoft in a different light doesn't it?