Setting the Industry Standard

Yet again, I've become entangled with someone who repeatedly uses the phrase "industry standards" as a justification to avoid doing additional work to rectify a process that is thoroughly awkward and illogical for the customer.  I considered this problem a year or so ago, and some of the issues are the same - it's an excuse for doing bad work, and helps to make sure that the service of all firms is commoditized to a low level of quality - but what occurs to me presently is that firms don't seem to recognize how industry standards are developed, and the power they have to change the standards by their own behavior.

In this case, it should have been obvious - the person I was working with (or attempting to work with) represents a leading brand in a very small industry. So small that if I mention what industry it was, most people will know the exact firm I am complaining about (hence, I won't). What this means is that whatever they choose to do, good or bad, will likely be imitated by the flock of smaller competitors and become the industry standard. Which is all the more reason to try to do something good (and difficult for weaker competitors to imitate) rather than get away with the least possible effort.

Firms in a position of industry leadership have the power to set, or at least influence, industry standards without consciously meaning to do so. But even lesser known firms in more crowded industries have the potential to set standards in the same manner. In any competitive market, attentive firms watch their rivals closely with an eye toward whether an action taken constitutes a new threat. When any firm does something new, others consider whether they should imitate it.

Actually, that is a bit generous: going by my experience, other firms will not consider whether they should imitate it - they will decide to imitate it without much consideration at all. Too often, I've been in situations where it is proposed to do what another company is doing with no consideration of the results that would be achieved or the negative consequences that might arise as side effects - just monkey-see-monkey-do.

That's a much more difficult problem, which would be a long diversion from the present topic, but it's worth mentioning because it means that whatever you do, others will follow without much thought, and the industry standard becomes something that most firms do without understanding why it is done - they're just trying to be like everyone else (and still wonder why their products are regarded as commodities by customers, which could be yet another red herring).

I also have the sense that it might be an interesting stunt to give other firms in the industry the distinct impression that you intend to do something incredibly stupid so that they will attempt to beat you to market with an idea that will do significant damage to their organizations, and then to not actually do it yourself.   That's a little bit evil, perhaps, but I have the sense that you could get away with it every once in a while and, even if they caught on, it would keep your competitors guessing as to whether what they see is a feint or an actual stratagem.

Dragging myself back to the point: anything that any firm does has the potential to set or adjust the industry standard, intentionally or otherwise, which makes it all the more crucial to consider any decision in consideration of what's best for the customer, rather than in imitation of what the competition is doing.

The decision to follow industry standards is the decision not to be competitive, not to be better for the customer, not to wriggle out of the commodity trap in which an industry is mired. Perhaps there are situations in which this approach is strategically advantageous ... but I tend to doubt that this is generally true.