'The Innovator's Dilemma' -- innovation in the hard-disk industry.
businessweek.com
businessweek.com
Some examples:
- Change from 5.25" to 3.5", not wanted by desktop customers, but the new portable market wanted it. Companies that only listened to the desktop market failed, so new entrants (with no existing customers) mostly won.
- Change from 3.5" to 2.5", largely conducted by incumbent firms as customers who wanted 3.5" disks also wanted 2.5" disks.
As always this is harder to do than say :)
I didn't read this article, but the HBS version had the point that the time to switch over to the new process is when the trajectory of the new process along the original variable puts it above the level that the satisficers want, not above the old process. So in other words you should adopt the new hard drive process when the trajectory puts the storage capacity ahead of what the satisficers want, not ahead of where the storage capacity of the old HD process will be. That is the point where the customers will switch over to the new process for the other benefits it provides.
This graph and the paragraph underneath explains it better: http://web.mit.edu/6.933/www/Fall2000/teradyne/clay.html
My first thought was how it relates to Microsoft as mentioned in this article: http://seekingalpha.com/article/80363-why-microsoft-will-nev... . Their fear of web apps undermining Windows/Office prevented them from taking a lead in the emerging market.
Lots of lessons here, but to my mind the best is: your first version should suck. Not will, "should". On some measurable obvious axis, disruptive technologies are inferior to their predecessors, which is why the industry giants haven't done them already. Christianson's book is full of examples of things that looked crappy to the incumbents and their customers, but worked for some subset of the market, and then wound up eating the whole industry.