The idea of technologically superior products is a huge blind spot for engineers. A lot of people whinge about why obviously better products fail when inferior

The idea of technologically superior products is a huge blind spot for engineers. A lot of people whinge about why obviously better products fail when inferior products succeed. Technological superiority is nice, but what you should be looking for when building products is market superiority. The overall quality of a product is only a single factor when making a purchase. Useability, safety, convenience, education, price, flexibility, distribution, marketing, and network effects also contribute to the success or failure of a product. Some common battles references of "superior" products failing are: Betamax vs VHS: Betamax had better image quality, but VHS had a longer runtime and was cheaper. Consumers wanted to watch movies without switching tapes and image quality was good enough on VHS, so it won. High Speed Rail: Who wouldn't want trains that travel over 250 mph? They are clearly superior to the regular trains that we are using so why not upgrade? High speed rail's biggest competitor is not a train, it is planes. Planes have disadvantages in terms of leaving you outside the center of a city, but they have several advantages over high speed rail. First they have lower operating costs. You need fewer people to operate a plane and planes fly at over 500 mph, so you need to pay less per mile per employee. Planes are safer and more flexible than high speed rail. You can re-route a plane to any destination in the world for no additional cost. High speed rail requires very expensive land acquisition and once the track is set it cannot be changed without additional capital. If you flex with the parameters there are conditions where high speed rail can be price competitive with planes but it requires highly dense cities relatively close to one another. The majority of the United States is not set up this way, so it is rational that we should not expect high speed rail. I could go on and on, but I believe most people are rational when making purchases. You can't fool everyone forever, so if your product is flailing look inward talk to customers and figure out how to make a market superior product instead of a technologically superior product.