Angela Liu’s blog mentions an article about CPI hoping to make a windowless airplane. Angela says that this upgrade “fulfills all social, environmental and economic aspects through the overall reduction of airplane fares, costs and emissions.”

Source: http://rack.1.mshcdn.com/media/ZgkyMDE0LzEwLzI4LzJjL0NQSWNhYmluLjZjMzNhLmpwZwpwCXRodW1iCTk1MHg1MzQjCmUJanBn/9f74c68c/18d/CPI-cabin.jpg

Indeed, she is right when she says that, but it seems to me that she has overlooked the huge competitive advantage CPI would gain from this. The mentioned article is a great example of taking a “consumer pain”, which is their desire to sit in the window-seat, and “relieve” them of this. It is a very customer-based competitive strategy where CPI not only reduces airplane fares, but also solves a customer’s problem in a much more creative way than the customers, or even the competitors, could have ever imagined.

If they can achieve this, they will surely gain a competitive edge in the market, increasing their market share and perhaps even changing the standards expected of a product/service from that industry. However, it is easy to “hope” to create a plane such as this, whilst in reality such a plane is not easy to create. The question that remains is whether such an idea can be turned into reality…