A company can spend years developing technology that changes what its customers can accomplish, yet continue selling it on advantages that competitors can increasingly match. Its messaging may still focus on familiar claims about speed, accuracy, efficiency, or functionality, even as the technology opens up possibilities that extend well beyond its original purpose.
This is more than a matter of outdated marketing language. As technology evolves, it can change the nature of the problem a product solves, the opportunities available to customers, and even the basis on which companies compete. When the market narrative fails to evolve alongside the technology, companies risk investing in innovation while continuing to compete on yesterday’s value proposition.
AI is accelerating this dynamic, but the underlying challenge is not new. It raises a strategic question for technology companies: are they evaluating innovation only in terms of what it improves, or are they recognizing what it makes possible?
Innovation changes more than the product
In his Harvard Business Review article, The “Human-in-the-Loop” Fallacy, Sangeet Paul Choudary argues that organizations often approach AI by automating existing tasks rather than reconsidering the activities, services, and business models that become possible when technology removes previous constraints.
His examples illustrate the difference. IKEA automated routine customer inquiries while retraining thousands of employees to provide remote interior design services. Virtual production is changing filmmaking by moving creative decisions that once happened in post-production onto the set itself. In both cases, the technology creates opportunities that go beyond making an existing process faster or more efficient.
The same principle applies to product innovation. A new capability may improve an existing product, but it may also change how customers work, create new applications, or make previously impractical solutions commercially viable. Those possibilities can reshape the market around a technology.
Yet companies do not always revisit their assumptions about the value they offer. Product development may be moving ahead, while positioning remains anchored to the original use case, customer problem, or competitive advantage. The result is a disconnect between what the technology can now deliver and what the company is actually selling.
The danger of competing on yesterday’s differentiators
I’ve seen versions of this challenge across Pro AV, broadcast, and language technology. These are distinct markets, but they share a pattern: as technology advances, the way companies explain its value doesn’t always keep pace.
In Pro AV, advances in processing, networking, automation, and software have changed what production and AV systems can do. Yet companies can still find themselves competing primarily on specifications and individual product capabilities. Those details are important, but they don’t necessarily explain how a solution changes the way an organization operates, manages its infrastructure, or delivers an experience. When the conversation stays at the component level, the broader value of the technology can be difficult for customers to see.
Language technology offers a particularly clear example of this challenge. As companies across the sector adopt AI, their products and marketing increasingly rely on the same claims: faster translation, more natural voices, real-time speech processing, and increasingly seamless multilingual communication. The technology may differ considerably under the hood, but those differences are often difficult to see in the way companies describe their offerings. When everyone is talking about AI and making similar promises, the challenge is to establish what actually sets a solution apart, where it performs differently, and what that means for the customer. A company’s competitive advantage can be lost in a market narrative that makes every solution sound much the same.
In both markets, the issue goes beyond finding more persuasive language. Companies need to understand how their technology is changing, how customer expectations are evolving, and which capabilities are becoming standard. Otherwise, they risk defining their value around advantages that no longer carry the same weight.
When positioning becomes a competitive disadvantage
A value proposition shapes much more than marketing copy. It influences which markets a company pursues, which competitors it pays attention to, how it prioritizes product development, and what its sales teams emphasize.
When positioning falls behind technological and market change, the consequences can be significant. A company may continue competing on capabilities that customers increasingly expect as standard. It may overlook new applications or customer segments because they sit outside its established market definition. Its sales teams may struggle to move conversations beyond feature comparisons, while its latest innovations remain difficult to explain in terms of commercial value.
There’s another risk: competitors may define the emerging market and its buying criteria first. They may not have better technology, but if they understand the changing customer problem and articulate a more relevant value proposition, they can shape how buyers evaluate available solutions.
This is why positioning needs to be part of the innovation process, rather than an exercise that happens after product development. Understanding what a technology makes possible should inform how a company thinks about its market, its customers, and its competitive advantage.
Understanding what the technology makes possible
That requires companies to look beyond the capabilities they have developed and examine the changes those capabilities create. Which constraints have been removed? What can customers do now that was previously difficult, expensive, or impractical? Are new applications emerging? Are customer expectations changing? Could the technology serve a market or solve a problem the company has not traditionally considered?
It also means reassessing the competitive landscape. Which capabilities are becoming standard? Where does the technology deliver a meaningful difference? Are competitors addressing the same customer problem, or is the market beginning to evolve in a different direction?
These questions require a connection between technical understanding and commercial insight. Engineering and product teams understand what the technology does and how it is evolving. Marketing, sales, and customer-facing teams bring knowledge of buyer priorities, market expectations, and competitive dynamics. Positioning needs to bring those perspectives together.
Strategic communication plays a role in making that understanding visible. Technical positioning, thought leadership, white papers, and other content should reflect the company's actual capabilities and their relevance to the market. They should help customers understand not only what the technology does, but why its capabilities matter in the context of their own challenges and opportunities.
AI makes producing content easier, but more content will not resolve a weak market narrative. If a company hasn’t established what differentiates its technology, which customer problems it is best placed to solve, or where its value is changing, generating more material will only reproduce the same claims at greater volume.
The next competitive advantage may be a different way of seeing the market
Innovation creates opportunities, but recognizing their commercial significance requires companies to challenge their own assumptions. The customer problem may have changed. Capabilities that once differentiated a product may now be expected. New applications may be emerging outside the markets the company knows best.
Companies that continue to rely on their original value proposition risk investing in new technology while competing with an increasingly outdated understanding of their market. Meanwhile, a competitor that recognizes the changing customer problem and articulates a more relevant value proposition may be better positioned to capture the opportunity.
Innovation may create the opportunity, but a company’s ability to recognize and articulate its commercial significance can determine whether it captures the value.