Switching Costs

Ask an economist what holds back change and they’ll talk to you about “switching costs.” These costs are often thought of as monetary (imagine if you are an avid iPhone user, the need to repurchase all of your apps on Android would be an undesirable cost to switching platforms). But switching costs also apply to our psychology, our time and our effort when it comes to successfully making change happen (or finding excuses not to).

Right now the world around us is changing more rapidly than we’ve ever experienced, and this is naturally quite scary. But if you are looking to make or lead a change of any kind, it’s actually great news for the changemaker inside of you. With so, so much change happening all around us in every part of our lives, it makes the (perceived) switching costs of taking on any individual new change initiative much less burdensome. Imagine the restaurant that rapidly switches to take-out from dine-in, or the restaurant that trials that comfort food they’ve always wanted to attempt instead of the fine dining its customers expect.

When change is all around us, any single change feels far less risky and far more achievable than when we are the only ones making change amidst a static landscape.