The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Management of Innovation and Change)

organization’s values, which are the criteria that managers and employees in the organization use when making prioritization decisions.

These successful practitioners have in common their apparent understanding—whether explicit or intuitive—of both their customers’ trajectories of need and their own technologists’ trajectories of supply. Understanding these trajectories is the key to their success thus far. But the list of firms that have consistently done this is disturbingly shor

The early 5.25-inch drive makers found this application (one might even say that they enabled it) by trial and error, selling drives to whomever would buy them.

concepts are very different from the incremental-versus-radical distinction that has characterized many studies of this problem. Second, the pace of technological progress can, and often does, outstrip what markets need. This means that the relevance and competitiveness of different technological approaches can change with respect to different mark

Clearly, the lower-right quadrant offered the most fertile ground for success.

financial analysts have a better intuition for the value of resources than for processes.

simpler than prior approaches. 8 They offered less of what customers in established markets wanted and so could rarely be initially employed there. They offered a different package of attributes valued only in emerging markets remote from, and unimportant to, the mainstream.

They did not fail because management was sleepy or arrogant. They failed because hydraulics didn’t make sense—until it was too late.

By approaching a disruptive business with the mindset that they can’t know where the market is, managers would identify what critical information about new markets is most necessary and in what sequence that information is needed.