Keeping It Up.

Robert Scoble asks how we keep up in the face of an information overload. It's clearly a question of prioritisation and one answer comes from the 3gsm world congress mobile phone conference.

Recognising that users are suffering from function fatigue and don't know what to buy when faced by a wall of similar complex phones, the differentiator is now going to be fashion.

Simultaneously, we have Sony marketing their Vaio laptop as a style accessory "like no other" with no mention of technical specifications.

I'm not sure how this fits with the other discernible trend of people seeking to express their individuality by ignoring the instructions of style pundits, but it's clear that excessive innovation is paradoxically not going to earn you the type of differentiation you imagine. Indeed, it may lay you open to a battle of trendiness.

Invention is good, but outrunning your mass market (and every product, how ever niche, has a mass market) is very bad marketing. Ensuring that your product/service meets and then marginally, but only marginally, surpasses your users' needs is the way to go.