utility that the average customer receives from a product or service.
And so as you can see, the red dashed line increases slightly over time.
In other words, customers demand a little bit more as time passes from the product.
They expect a little bit more utility.
They expect it to do a little bit more in terms of solving problems in their lives.
And the red band here, what it shows,
is the range of performance that customers expect.
So there are some customers who are very demanding with respect to performance.
They expect a lot from products, and then there are, the majority
of customers here in the middle, who have average expectations of products.
And then, down here, you have the least demanding, or
the customers with the lowest expectations of a product or service.
And, with the green and the blue lines, we're seeing companies and
their improvements of products or services, over time.
And most companies engage in improving their products over time.
They add additional benefits or utility to the product or
service, and most of those innovations, or
improvements, we call sustaining innovations, or sustaining improvements.
And usually it's incumbents, or companies that already exist,
that are undertaking the sustaining innovations.
And what they're trying to do as they make better and
better products, they make Improvements to it,
they're increasing the satisfaction of customers who are the most demanding.
And so at some point, companies that are introducing sustaining innovations,
and those companies are usually incumbents, are introducing
improvements that are at the top of this red range, this red curve.
And so they're really only satisfying,
with those improvements, the most demanding customers.
