Meaning drives innovation beyond tech and business models

Beyond technology and business model, innovation should be assessed along a third axis: meaning, how users perceive, interpret, and value a product. Two organisations can sell the same artefact yet offer diametrically different meanings. Candles for light and candles for atmosphere are the same object serving entirely different purposes in the customer's life.

This distinction matters because firms that compete only on technical features or business model efficiency miss the layer where customers actually form preferences. A product's meaning can shift without any change in its physical properties. When the meaning shifts, so does the competitive landscape, often in ways that purely functional analysis cannot predict. Understanding the meaning axis is what separates firms that create genuine differentiation from those that chase specification improvements in a market that has already moved on.

Links: Commodity markets reward brand, not just quality, Recommendations matter more than marketing spend