Abstract
While commoditization is an ever omnipresent threat, many established firms see the future of their industry not in terms of commoditization, but of impending irrelevance. Today’s icons are increasingly being thrust aside by new firms and new products. This decline of erstwhile industry dominance need not arise due to disruptive innovations that seen earlier in Chap. 2 and in Chap. 51. Rather, the discussion in this chapter is the struggle that some leaders face, in thwarting of challenges from upstarts. A struggle oftentimes to stay relevant.
Recall from our discussion earlier, disruptive innovations are due to the emergence of new products some of whose attributes are worse than those of the incumbent product, but leads to the failure of leading firms in an industry.
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References
See Fast Company (2001).
Lilli, a German doll was based on a cartoon strip in a German newspaper. Ruth Handler bought a doll during a trip to Switzerland with her daughter, named Barbie. She took it back with her to the impress upon the management of Mattel Inc. that an adult doll was a good idea. Ruth had not realized that the eleven and half inch doll was a sex toy for German men!
The four Bratz dolls are Yasmin, Jade, Sasha and Cloe. For a fuller discussion on the emergence of the Bratz threat, read the chapter entitled Toppling Barbie: Bratz Predict the Future, Warner (2005). The chapter is available at http://www.thepowerofthepurse.com/Warner_CH08.pdf.
One widely respected tech journal had the following to say about the IE4.0. “Let’s face it: Microsoft has never been more right in claiming that IE is integral to its OS. True, it might have passed for a separate application in ye olden days of 3.0, but forget about Win 98; IE 4.0 is already one great, big blendo. Worse yet, it’s immediately clear that seamless Net integration is appropriate, intelligent, and exactly what you’d desire and demand from an OS circa 1997.” HotWired: NetSurf (October 27, 1997).
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© 2007 Physica-Verlag Heidelberg
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(2007). Staying Alive: Struggles in Innovation Space. In: Innovation, Market Archetypes and Outcome. Physica-Verlag HD. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7908-1946-5_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7908-1946-5_7
Publisher Name: Physica-Verlag HD
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