Why innovations fail

A classic paper by John Gourville, a professor of marketing at Harvard Business School, stipulates that “many innovations fail because consumers irrationally overvalue the old while companies irrationally overvalue the new.”

Gourville claims that for new entrants to stand a chance, they can’t just be better, they must be nine times better.

Why such a high bar?

Because old habits die hard and new products or services need to offer dramatic improvements to shake users out of old routines.

Gourville writes that products that require a high degree of behavior change are doomed to fail even if the benefits of using the new product are clear and substantial.

Source: Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal