The Application Dominance Effect

When Google quietly became "the internet" and Hoover became "vacuuming," a single brand took over an entire category of thought. Ravi Sandhu calls this the Application Dominance Effect: the tendency for the first or loudest version of anything to colonise the mental space where alternatives should live, until better options become invisible and the status quo feels like the only option there ever was.

Drawing on thirty years across telecoms, banking, and enterprise technology, alongside personal stories from bhangra dance floors to corporate boardrooms, Sandhu gives change leaders, entrepreneurs, and curious minds a precise vocabulary for a force that quietly shapes what gets tried, funded, and left behind.

Part psychology, part field guide, this book explains how dominant frames form, why they resist even strong evidence, and how to break their grip, on your organisation, your career, and your own mind, closing with a practical audit for making change a lasting habit.