Forever Beta

July 7th, 2009 | Posted in: marketing

In the ‘Foreverism’ trend report by Trendwatching.com there is a piece about ‘Forever-Beta’. Having graduated on this topic, I was immediately drawn into the subject again, and just  had to share it’s simple brilliance with you.

Everybody knows that before a product gets launched, there is always a period of testing it in ‘beta’. After the feedback of the beta-testers comes back the product is improved and launched. Nothing new right? What this theory argues is that in the future products will have to be in beta-mode forever as they reach different groups of consumers with different needs. What will happen then is that what started out as one product will evolve into multiple variations of the same product, satisfying consumers from multiple markets. Here again we see Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory in action. In the future, there will be less and less mass market products and niche products will thrive.

Going into Forever Beta mode is what companies will have to start doing soon in order to secure existence in the future. I’ll bet you there are countless start ups out there already involving their customers continuously in their product development process, taking the principle of web 2.0 into the offline world. This is slowly but certainly taking away the customers of the large and slow incumbents which are too busy defending their ‘present’ and forgetting about tomorrow…

Click here to download the entire ‘Foreverism’ trend report. Obligatory reading if you ask me!