“Invention is the mother of necessity.”

“Necessity is the mother of invention.”

This is precisely what you and I have learnt during our existence on this planet earth. But things are changing and the above statement no more hold true in the modern world scenario. The forces of market has made it read something like this “Invention/innovation is the mother of necessity.”

Every single day sitting in front of my TV of a slim kind I see advertisement of Flat LCD television which offer picture in million & zillion of colors, and honestly I am tempted to buy it. And this despite of the following facts 1, my current television is doing its duty very well. 2, my very human eyes can’t recognize more than 10,000 let alone those million & zillions of color. So I hope by this small example you have got the drift that what I intend to discuss here. There is no necessity, there is no need but still I want to buy one and television is just one example, there is a very long list Mobile phones, laptops, cars, cameras, clothes and what not.

So why it is so, why I want all these things? There should be some reason behind this, there have to have a logical, rational explanation. So let’s try to have one.

“Invention is the mother of necessity.”

And this is the answer, just because a multinational corporation has come up with a not so useful product, they want you to buy one. Means they want you feel the necessity of the same because they have invented or innovated something new. And believe me they will make you believe that if you are not watching your faviourate show on a HD television you are a big time low life, if you are not using their even more complicated touch screen 3G phone you have no right to talk. And this is not just the case with commodity market, service market is no different.

You get yourself the best possible option of DTH services available in market but next day you feel heartbroken, you feel robbed because the same provider is offering a better option, and they want you to buy this one also and believe just to keep your ever growing ego you will get this one too.

These are few classic cases of how New Inventions are causing new needs which technically never existed.

And with the passage of time even we are developing habits which supports this phenomenon. The urban families have growing tendency of visiting the malls, and the aftermath is they visit different shops and end up buy this thing or that thing, and the bottom-line is they really don’t need any of that stuff.


This particular phenomenon finds it roots in the fact the market is highly saturated, the very survival of MNCs depends upon the repeat buyers and to turn a buyer into a repeat buyer they need to come with new products, which in most cases are just marginally better version of their existing products and services.

Ad subsequently through different means of marketing/advertising they manage to develop a need of the same in targeted customer group. This subsequently results in this new world modern saying “Invention is the mother of necessity.”

So can we point a finger on someone for this?

No, we can’t, this is a vicious circle and there is actually no looking back.

PS: The article is written keeping consumer point of view in mind.