[Sigia-l] Is pricing design?

[Troy Winfrey]

Quoting Ziya Oz:

> So is pricing part of design? Should it be? Is it better left to business?


I don't have enough direct experience with product management to answer
definitively, but my suspicion is "yes." I'm currently reading Christensen's
The Innovator's Dilemma, which provides very strong support for that notion.
I am very excited to see what happens with the iPhone, since it is an
excellent test case of the theories Christensen has developed.
I suspect that the iPhone is actually what Christensen would call a
sustaining technology--like a flash drive that has more memory than the last
generation's--rather than a disruptive technology (as a flash drive was to
DRAM). Thing is, Apple is positioning this as disruptive with those
ubiquitous ads. If they're actually drinking their own Kool-Aid, this might
lead to trouble.
The really tangled issue is the web of social and cultural practice around
this product, which is essentially impossible to predict. That's where it's
going to thrive or dive. I don't know if, or how, social practice can be
assimilated quantifiably into a growing body of evidence about the behavior
of product launches. That practice is much more important than it used to
be, and not just because there are more IAs and UXDs looking for it.
Technology is moving toward extending soft capabilities (making and managing
friends), not hard ones (like moving more cubic feet of earth or even
storing more information).