Information technology and product policy: 'Smart' products

Increasingly, information technology (IT) is incorporated in products to make them 'smart' - to provide the user with improved information about and control over performance, greater automation, and enhanced features, functions, and capabilities. These product improvements - and one hopes the consumer sees them as improvements - are made possible by the programing capabilities of microprocessors and other electronic devices, which expand the set of benefit-enhancing attributes that can be designed into a product and make it easier and cheaper to change, add, or drop a growing set of attributes. This article outlines three major productpolicy concerns stemming from the new-found design facility, flexibility, and economy: getting the product and product line 'right', managing the speed and nature of product change, and establishing product-use standards. A central message that emerges is the need for a new system of checks and balances to restrain the product supplier from piling on the features, too fast and with dysfunctional disruptions in product-use standards. The message should be of interest to a broad set of organizational functions: product design and development, product and marketing management, and IT management.