The newborn technologies take over where their predecessors leave off. History is full of examples. Calculators replaced slide rules, word processors replaced typewriters, CD's replaced records and flat screens are replacing picture tubes. With the ceaseless advancement of technology, newer, better solutions to customers' problems constantly emerge. Because of their inherent constraints, solutions are a limited platform upon which only incremental improvements can be made toward advancing a process to its ultimate level of performance.
Disaster looms on the horizon.
Solutions act only as interstitial bridges, spanning the precipice of time between an industry's technological breakthroughs and product advancements. Organizations must view their solutions, however great they seem today, as disposable tools. Only then will they be able to continually create customer value in the face of innovation and commoditization. Thus they hinder their own ability to create customer value. They limit their own longevity and define their own mortality.