Innovator’s dilemma is about first-mover advantage
The risk intrinsic to unknown markets is where disruptive innovations that lead to strong first-mover advantages exist.
It is in disruptive innovations, where we know least about the market, that there are such strong first-mover advantages. This is the innovator’s dilemma.[1]
The innovator’s dilemma is this:
- to continue with sustaining innovations in a stable, predictable market, with a strong customer base (that will ultimately lead the organization to fail by focusing on the present)
- or risk failure in the near-term, by pursuing a disruptive innovation that provides low profit margins from a little-known market (but that may ultimately provide the first-mover advantages in a new market with a new product that enables the organization to thrive in the future).
See also:
- Most executives only know how to manage sustaining innovations
- Emerging markets are decreasingly attractive as organizations get larger
- Disruptive innovation is antithetical to good management
The Innovator’s Dilemma – Christensen (1997), § “Introduction.” ↩︎