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tion about the idea, i.e., – the consumers are aware of the need or want for the new product.

We shall limit our discussion to the extreme regions (I and III), as they are the poles of our argument:

1. Information about a product will diffuse only after the market shows an interest in it. Therefore, the product must respond to the need of as broad a population as possible.

2. The extraction of an idea from the market and its assessment by means of

A w areness of an emergent need Time I II III

a market sample (similarly to feasibility studies and studies of the predicted success of a product), are especially effective when the market is in Region III, in which the population is familiar with the idea and is able to assess it. 3. It is impossible to extract a new idea from the market when the latter is in Region I, as at this stage only a limited public knows about its existence. In this region, the statistical probability of finding consumers aware of the idea in a random sample of the population is very low.

4. In Region III, the market will provide plenty of information about the product, but this information will not be surprising, as the market is well aware of it. The competitors, able to conduct a similar market analysis, will not be surprised either. In such a situation, it is more than probable that at least one other competitor may discover the same need at the same time, as illustrated in the following discussion.

Many readers will have encountered competing products that were launched in the market almost simultaneously. The proximity in time of launching of a product by competing firms, and the business competition between them exclude the possibility that the products were copied, and we assume indus- trial espionage cannot account for all the cases. We believe that the manufac- turers responded to a market need that was present in Region III. None of the manufacturers gained an advantage through marketing thinking; the battle rages between competing engineers, designers and planners of services to produce a better quality product at a lower price and in a shorter time, with market experts taking the position of salespeople or “information providers”. Let us portray this state of affairs by a few examples. There are firms that specialize in the promotion of new products. Inventors approach thesefirms with new ideas, and they provide support in the legal, operational and mar- keting aspects of the new product. A director of such afirm told us the fol- lowing story: One morning, an inventor came to his office with a device that locks the radio-cassette in a car, a security measure against theft. The inven- tor had already applied for a patent on this device, and the idea was enthu- siastically received in the company. Since it was simple, the device was inexpensive and the need for such a device was present. After a few days of working on the idea, a second inventor arrived, claiming that he had a revo- lutionary idea for the prevention of radio-cassette theft from cars. He had applied for a patent a few days after thefirst inventor, and his model was almost identical to the first. As the director was wondering how the two people could be so intimately coordinated his eye fell on an advertisement in the newspaper, offering a similar device for self-assembly. In this case too, a patent had been applied for.

Was this merely a rare coincidence, or is there another explanation? The answer lies in the fact that just a few weeks earlier, the insurance companies had raised the premium for insuring car radio-cassettes. A demand arose for a product that would replace the insurance costs which had risen overnight. The fact that three market-aware, imaginative people had reacted at the same time and in the same way points to the dynamics of the environment of new products as related to market needs.

When the market develops a new need this is noticed by thousands of entre- preneurs who regularly survey it for arising possibilities. When an opportu- nity emerges it is responded to immediately, sometimes by several companies or individual inventors concurrently. Many such examples, of simultaneous inventions responding to a new need of the market, whose inventors were not aware of each other’s existence, are available. For example, Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola were developed during the same period, immediately after prohi- bition of alcoholic beverages was declared in the United States. These drinks contained a low dosage of codeine, had an effect similar to that of alcohol, and were marketed as an antidote to headaches [10]. Differential mathematics was developed at the same time by Leibnitz and Newton; the chip technology, micro-computers and software adaptable to different uses (such as the elec- tronic sheet or the word processor) appeared in different parts of the world at the same time; and the incandescent light bulb and the telephone are ascribed to Edison and to Bell, although both were invented by others, who were slow or hesitant on the commercial level [33, 34].