Class 1

Can You Say What Your Strategy Is?

Companies that dont have a simple and clear statement of strategy are likely to fail at
executing it. Employees get frustrated when no clear strategy exists for the company or its
lines of business. Some companies fail to appreciate the necessity of having a simple, clear,
succinct strategy statement that everyone can internalize and use as a guideline light for
making difficult choices. A well-understood statement of strategy aligns behavior within the
business. It allows everyone in the organization to make individual choices that reinforce one
another and boost effectiveness. With a clear definition two things happen: first, formulation
becomes infinitely easier because executives know what they are trying to create; second,
implementation becomes much simples because the strategys essence can be readily
communicated and easily internalized by everyone in the organization.
A strategy statement should have three critical components:
Objective The definition of the objective should include not only an end point but also a
time frame for reaching it. The strategic objective should be specific, measurable and
time bound. It should also be a single goal.
Scope It is also crucial to define the scope, or domain, of the business: the part of the
landscape in which the firm will operate. A firms scope encompasses three dimensions:
customer or offering, geographic location, and vertical integration. Clearly defined
boundaries in those areas should make it obvious to managers which activities they
should concentrate on and, more important, what they should not do.
Advantage How are you going to reach your objective? Your competitive advantage is
the essence of your strategy. What your business will do differently from or better than
others will define the all-important means by which you will achieve your stated
objective. That advantage has complementary external and internal components: a
value proposition that explains why the targeted customer should buy your product
above all the alternatives, and a description of how internal activities must be aligned so
that only your firm can deliver that value proposition. Clarity about what makes the firm
distinctive is what most helps employees understand how they can contribute to
successful execution of the strategy.

Developing a Strategy Statement

The first step is to create a great strategy, which requires careful evaluation of the industry
landscape. This includes developing a detailed understanding of customer needs, segmenting
customers, and then identifying unique ways of creating value to the ones the firm chooses to
serve. It also calls for an analysis of the competitors current strategies and a prediction of how
they might change in the future. The process involves a rigorous objective assessment of the
firms capabilities and resources and those of competitors. The creative part of developing a
strategy is finding the sweet spot that aligns the firms capabilities with customer needs in a
way that competitors cannot match given the changing external context. The end result should
be a brief statement that reflects the three elements of an effective strategy.
Words do lead to action. Spending the time to develop the few words that truly capture your
strategy and that will energize and empower your people will raise the long-term financial
performance of your organization.

(Slides and Summaries Class 1)

Innovation can really pay off so failing to innovate endangers the firm. But innovating
does not secure success and being the innovator does not always pay.
Leveraging technology requires a strategic perspective.
But innovation does not replace strategy and is not strategy itself.
The more activities critical to the competitive advantage the more difficult the imitation.
Given a particular industry structure firms will have diverse strengths and weaknesses
and compete differently. Different operation systems have different characteristics and
equally diverse trade-offs. A given operational system should be designed to reflect the
priorities and balances associated to the strategy and competitive position of the firm.
Firms have cost-based advantages if they can lowers costs more than they can lower
prices. General cost drivers are: related to firm size or scope (economies of scale,
economies of scope, capacity utilization, specialization), related to cumulative
experience (learning curve), related to the organization of transactions (vertical
integration, long-term contracts, management and control), superior technology can
increase production/distribution efficiency, and others such as input prices, location and
economies of density.
Firms can have differentiation-based advantages if they can raise price more than it
increases cost. General benefit drivers are: physical characteristics of the product,
quality of complementary goods, characteristics associated with sale or delivery,
characteristics that shape consumers perceptions or expectations and subjective
image.
If customers differ in preferences, firms can have competitive advantages in serving niche
markets. In order to be successful in such strategy, firms must differentiate on attributes
customers really care about, have a large enough niche and produce at a low enough
cost given prices that can be charged.

Class 1 - Husky Case

Machine Business/Injection Machine

Fierce competition
There is a standardized basis but Husky tries to do customization
Low switching costs
Difficult market to enter due to CAPEX requirements, a lot of investment associated with
this
Reputation is also important and specific knowledge is necessary
Substitutes for these machines? Not really, there are other technologies that you can use
for certain applications but no direct substitutes
Buyer power? The is some degree of buyer power. Big clients have higher buyer power,
also because of the bidding process
Not much supplier power because components are mainly standardized. In some areas
there may be some degree because of customization
Not such an interesting market to enter but probably OK if you are already there
Husky has been doing well historically. There is some degree of competitive advantage

Mold Business

More players in the market

More distributed competition
More of a craft
Not so interesting

Huskys Strategy
Type: Differentiation strategy. They are positioning themselves to offer clients something
with added value for a price premium. They offer faster and lighter products and high
performance machines that are very durable
Scope: They innovate. They specialize in PET bottles (very narrow scope in terms of the
nature of products that they do) and thin wall applications + packaging. Limited
economies of scope. No firm can make everything for everyone, there needs to be a
strategic focus. They also do added services and have a global market approach,
because they are choosing to be more narrow in terms of products and solutions they
need to be more global to have enough clients.
Activities: they need a lot of investment in R&D to sustain their strategy and competitive
advantage. Strong logistics and support structure as they want their clients to be very
reassured that they can provide service if something happens. They have a really skilled
internal sales force, offer complementary products that help clients maximize the value
they get from products they buy, training centers and very firm values in terms of
support and expectation.
If you are a differentiated producer you need to add extra value and that costs more money.
Clients only pay more if they benefit from it they dont pay more, they get more.
The crisis

Prices of the resin went up, especially for PET

Lower cost structure of competitors
Sales force unprepared to respond to competitive entry (unable to explain the benefits)
Fragility of reputation in new markets

Competitors with products with same perceived quality but cheaper

Commoditization of the market
Loss of competitive edge on cost and productivity
Stagnation of main market

Should they change their strategy? Or improve just some aspects?

- Keep strategy

Enter new segments

Endure crisis (there are a lot of opportunities to cut costs)
Innovate more
Further develop global presence
Rethink business model (at least temporarily)

- Change Strategy
Become general producer
- Do regardless off
Reduce costs, mostly in waste. They used to have a really good margin.
Drop the modd business

Class 2
The S-Curve: A New Forecasting Tool
The beginning of the S-curve represents the introduction of a new technology. Usually, a lot of
research is developed and a lot of try and error is made. The first products that are introduced
in a certain market are not perfect and some problems arise, which are taken care of and new
design concepts appear and other approaches are tried. In early stages of research, one
removes one impediment only to find another. And that is why the S-curve is so flat in the
beginning. Progress is made and we begin to ascend the S-curve of a certain technology. Then
another problem strike and has to be overcome. Progress is slow at first but then accelerates
and, with performance improvements, the curve becomes steeper.
For each new product (or process) the S-curve shows precisely how much performance has
improved and how much effort has been expended to gain that improvement. Usually
it shows us a rather long period of little progress followed by growing success.But the
progress can also work the other way as technological limits are approached. Rather than
showing more and more progress with less and less effort like at the beginning, at the end of
the S-curve each new step makes less and less progress and performance
improvement is rather slow when compared to the steeper part. We start to watch
diminishing returns.
The S-curve traces out the path of development of new products and processes with each
successive point on the curve representing an improvement in performance. The pattern of the
S-curve repeats itself again and again in industry after industry. These curves describe reality.
A forecasting tool if that is true and if the limit for an S-curve can
be predicted, then the S-curve can yield valuable insights. If we can define
important performance parameters, trace the early days of progress of these
parameters versus the effort to make that progress, and develop a point of view
on what the limits of these performance parameters are, then we have a basis for
foreseeing how much further current products can be improved and how much
effort it will take to get them to higher levels of performance. It will give insights
about how products will fare in the future, what new products to try to develop and
how much effort will be required to develop them. What we want to know is the
relationship between effort put and results achieved. You might think you should
be plotting results against the amount of time involved. But that would be an error.
It is not the passage of time that leads to progress, but the application of effort. If
we would plot against time spent we would be making assumptions about the rate
of effort applied. The forecasting error would be a result of bad competitive
analysis, not bad technology analysis. Thus, it such circumstances it might appear
that a technology still has a great potential but in fact what is fueling its advance
is rapidly increasing amounts of investment. At some point it gets more and more
expensive to develop each new generation of a certain product or technology.
The higher the slope, the more productive we are. Thus, a convenient way of
pinpoint where we are on a curve of results versus efforts is to talk about the slope or
productivity of the technical effort. At the start of the curve we need to put in significant
effort before we can expect to see results. Once the learning is done, we begin to make
significant progress for very little expenditure or effort. That usually does not last too
long. At some point we begin to approach the limits of the technology and we start to
run out of steam. Then the question is might there be another way to deliver the desired
performance to customers. Some new technology which, though still undeveloped,

might eventually
improvement?

outperform

the

current

one,

which

is

increasingly

resisting

But too often we dont ask those questions. Behind conventional management wisdom is the
implicit assumption that the more effort we put in, the more progress that results. In fact, this
is only the case in the first half of the S-curve. In the other half it is wrong.
S-curves almost always come in pairs. The gap between the pair of S-curves represents a
discontinuity a point when one technology replaces the other. In fact, rarely does a single
technology meet all customers needs. There are almost always competing technologies, each
with its own S-curve, trying to defeat the others in a market segment. Companies that have
learned how to cross technological discontinuities have escaped this trap. They invest in
research in order to know where they are on relevant S-curves and know what to expect from
the beginning the middle and the end of these curves. These companies have become very
sophisticated at massaging the shape of the curve, making it steeper by developing new
products and processes faster than their competitors.
The cost of being late to the market overwhelms the cost increases for accelerating
development. Some companies have learned how to share the development of technology and
products by making extensive use of external suppliers and managing that in an efficient way.
The better companies collaborate as much as they can. Administrative procedures can also be
eliminated to speed up development. But, perhaps the most important, companies have
learned that in order to be fast to the market, they must invest in understanding the science
that supports the base of the S-curve. Companies that get products to market ahead of their
competitors still dont take shortcuts: they do their research first, then tackle engineering. As a
result their S-curves are steeper than other companies trying to develop the same technology.
However, none of these efforts will save a company from a new technology.

EFFICIENCY VERSUS EFFECTIVENESS

There is one major problem when it comes to the management of technology: companies focus
more on efficiency when they should be concerned with effectiveness. Effectiveness is set
when a company determines which S-curve it will pursue. Efficiency is the slope of the
present curve. Effectiveness deals with sustaining a strategy efficiency with the present
utilization of resources. New technologies can outperform old one by wide margins. There are
many decisions that put effectiveness and efficiency at odds with each other, particularly those
involving resource allocation. Pursuing a new S-curve means withdrawing resources from the
maturing business. It always appears more economical to protect the old business than to feed
the new one at least until competitors pursuing the new approach get the upper hand. There is
also the belief that the defender, the competitor with the largest market share and the most
knowledge about production processes and distribution will have the advantage in combat in
the marketplace. But the reverse can be true as the defender has an inherent disadvantage.
The attacker can hide in a niche and it is often more powerful than it appears, and more
motivated. It is not uncommon to fund 80% of the effort going to the defense of products that
are more important for what they have contributed in the past than for what they are going to
contribute in the future. This consumes funds that could be spent on technical or market
exploration or fields with higher potential or higher productivity.
Even if a defender succeeds in managing his own S-curve better, chances are he will not be
able to raise his efficiency. Not much use against an attacker whose productivity might be
climbing ten times faster because he has chosen a different S-curve. All to frequently the
defender believes his productivity is actually higher than his attackers and ignores what the

attacker potentially may have to offer to the customer. Defenders and attackers often have a
different perspective when it comes to judging productivity.
Some products fail at first to meet customer standards, but then, almost overnight,
they set new high-quality standards and storm the market. Even if the defender admits
that the attackers product may have an edge, he is likely to say it is too small to matter.
Reallocating resources is thus a painful business. But in order to manage a technological
discontinuity, that is exactly what they must do forsake the past by abandoning a technology
that, more often than not, has just entered the most productive phase of its S-curve.

Industry Life Cycles

10

(Slides and Summaries Class 2)

Technology and product performance is not static, it evolves with effort and time.
Early progress is slow and then it rapidly accelerates. Finally it slows down and hits
diminishing returns.
Never evaluate a technology or product only through current performance, always reflect
on curve position.
S-curves appear in pairs. Each represents a different underlying technical approach. Next
generation represents performance advances in multiples based on significant
innovations.
Changing S-curve needs to be justified as to if, when and how to do it, anticipating the
requires changes in strategy, product and organization.
The fundamental dilemma is that it always appears to be more economical to protect the
old business than to feed the new one, at least competitors pursuing a new approach
get the upper hand. But by then it might be too late.
Innovation and Technology Cycle a number of variations of the new innovation occur.
Early innovations are usually crude and experimental when first introduced as new
technology rarely works well. The new technology is not well understood and each
company aims to differ from competitors. Old innovations rarely just vanish, they are
stretched to their limits. And the cycle ends with the emergence of a dominant design
DOMINANT DESIGN collection of enduring product standards to which the bulk of an industry
conforms. It comes from the combination of market demand, technological possibilities and
individual, organizational and governmental factors each company pushes its own. The
market operates with package of relatively well established innovations in favor of technical
excellence to reduce technical uncertainty. The dominant design is not the frontier of technical
performance. It might not be the best product but it is the best overall package. It is important
because it reduces experimentation and establishes clear performance targets. It allows
companies to design standardized and interchangeable parts to optimize organizational
processes, volumes and efficiency prerequisite to mass adoption and volume production. For
customers the emergence of a dominant design is also important because it reduces productclass confusion and decreases prices.
INCREMENTAL CHANGE After a dominant design arises, technological process is driven by
numerous incremental innovations of new dominant design instead of trying to invent new
ones and technological regime becomes more orderly. Most performance improvement over the
lifetime of technology will occur outside the era of incremental change as the focus of
competition shifts from higher performance to lowers costs and differentiation via minor design
variations and strategic position tactics.
Product and Process Innovation: Introduction > Growth > Maturity > Decline
Who exits and who survives? Early entrants tend to dominate. The process favors firms more
able to blend product and process innovation to force the hand towards dominant design. In
this stage firms explore advantages pf growth and scale by increasing returns to process R&D.
Success breeds success. Firms exist or do not enter if they are outside given the dominant
design or if they have insufficient process improvement capabilities.
First innovation evolves very slowly and then it starts to take off. Finally, it stabilizes.
When upgrading products with new technologies there is a period where the new product
technology performs worse than the older one. This has implications for strategy.
At the end of the S-curve the firms have power and are established in the market.
At the beginning you may not have clients or resources but at least you dont have a
whole business that is likely to be destroyed.

11

 S-curve transitions is where a lot of action happens. If you are a new firm, at the
beginning you dont have any liabilities and just want to develop the new technology.
But the incumbents have a huge liability and a lot of times they cannot sustain their
leadership. Paying attention to this transition is great to spot new opportunities. It is
important to understand how the technology cycle evolves.
Variation is something we can now do that we could not do before, or doing it in a
different way.
Fermentation is when we have a discontinuity. Its a different approach towards a certain
problem. We set trials, we are on to something but not sure what. You have an idea of
how to evolve and how to solve the problem but you dont know for sure what
customers want.
Dominant design is the way of thinking about a certain product, the most efficient way to
deliver a certain innovation.
Incremental change orderly performance
In general, in innovation, first movers have an advantage because there is earlier trial
and error and firms are closer to the customer. The later the less opportunities you
have to learn and to become the dominant design.

12

Class 2 E-ink Case

Good moves:
Developed credible partnerships (Toppan and Philips)
Developed good product vision
Good intellectual property, a lot of patents
Good starting team, CEO with a lot of experience.
Got products to market early and that gave them more exposure
Strong company culture
Ability to raise funds
Strong research capabilities
Visibility/exposure
Very strong lead customer (Sony)
Questionable moves:
Took on too many projects in different markets (very common risk because at the
beginning the company really needs cash but this makes you lose focus)
Missed expectations of main clients
Missed IPO window, they went too late and missed a really good opportunity for funding
Lack of market focus
Underestimated the manufacturing complexity and costs
Trouble managing partnerships (mostly the culture dimension)
Management problems
Grew workforce ahead of product
Not enough market research/due diligence (they were putting things out but not really
worried about how they were working)
R&D too focused in the short-term projects and lot in the long-term
Some of these questionable moves arose from management problems but others are inherent
to a startup firm where the balance is hard to keep. Some of them are the result of just trying
to survive.
What could have been different?
Could have considered licensing, which would involve a different business model
(licensing has lower margins and a much smaller magnitude)
This was during a clear beginning of the S-curve in a dominant design era. What was
going to be the dominant design of the radio paper? What would maximize their
chances of becoming the dominant design? E-Ink is one of the protagonists in the new
S-curve
Narrowing their product scope
Focusing more on e-paper issues/characteristics
Could have entered the display market itself (doing this would be the complete opposite
of licensing) Philips stopped manufacturing so I-ink could have started
It would be very hard to make these decision and not obvious

Middle options:
Projects that focus more on the long run and sustainability
Focus more on performance metrics/outcomes
Partner up with content providers
Iterating more with partners and clients
Resolving gap between vision and implementation. They had a clear vision but were
doing too many things ate the same time. They were very unreasonable regarding what
they thought they could do and what they actually did in terms of time.

13

As a VC would you invest?

Yes

Lots of opportunities still available

Expected growth
Have actual product + revenue stream
Good R&D
First-mover advantage
Ahead of competitors
New structure will work
Still much of the outlooks is there

No

Alternative technologies are a threat

Too expensive to enter now given
uncertainty
If they get more VC they will have to dilute
themselves more
They like R&D too much
Too attached to their vision and they forget
about clients that need and want a product
that is not being delivered
Not clear business model

E-Ink is selling what they believe the dominant design is. But for everyone else the dominant
design can be something else. You have all of these firms convinced of what the dominant
design will be. This is the pre dominant design phase where every firm claims to be the future.
Ultimately, one of these firms will be able to push through the S-curve and actually beat all
others when it comes to actually being the dominant design. In the beginning there is a lot of
trial and error. You put money in the company if you believe there is still a fair chance they will
become the dominant design.
The dominant design is not a physical way of displaying information with electronic ink. It is all
about how customers interact with technology.
In this phase you need to deal with a lot of uncertainties, you need to balance a lot of aspects
such as vision, money, partnerships, teams. In this case they were not a total disaster but they
were not the dominant design.

14

15

Class 3
The Art of Standards Wars
Standards wars are battles for market dominance between incompatible technologies. The
outcome can determine the survival of the companies involved.
Incompatibilities can arise almost by accident, yet persist for many years
Network markets ten to tip towards the leading player, unless the other players
coordinate to act quickly and decisively
Seceding from the standard-process can leave you in a weak market position in the future
A large buyer can have more influence than suppliers in tipping the balance
Those left with the less popular technology will find a way to cut their losses, either by
employing adapters or by writing off existing assets and joining the bandwagon
Consumer expectations can easily become self-fulfilling in standards battles
Technologies can seek well-suited niches if the forces towards standardization are not
overwhelming
Ongoing innovation can lead to victory in standards wars
Adapters can be the salvation of the losing technology and can help to ultimately defuse
a standards war
Adoption of a new technology can be painfully slow if the price/performance ratio is
unattractive and if it requires adoption by a number of different players
First-mover advantages need not be decisive, even in markets strongly subject to tipping
Victory in standards wars often require building an alliance
A dominant position in one generation of technology does not necessarily translate into
dominance in the next generation of technology
Standards wars are especially bitter and especially crucial to business success in
markets with strong network effects that cause consumers to play high value on
compatibility.
What is distinct about standards wars is that there are two firms vying for dominance. In some
cases, one of the combatants may be an incumbent that controls a significant base of
customers who use an older technology. In other instances, both sides may be starting from
scratch. Standards wars can end in a truce, a duopoly or a fight to death. True fight-to-death
standard wars are unique to markets with powerful positive feedback based on strong network
effects.
Before entering a standards battle, would-be combatants are well-advised to consider a
peaceful solution. Declaring an early truce in a standards war can benefit consumers as well as
vendors. Even bitter enemies have repeatedly been able to cooperate to establish standards
when compatibility is crucial for market growth. The more costly a battle is for both sides, the
greater are the pressures to negotiate a truce.
Not all standards wars are alike. They come in three distinct flavors. The starting point for
strategy in a standards battle is to understand which type of war you are fighting. The critical
distinguishing feature of the battle is the magnitude of the switching costs, or more generally
the adoption costs, for each rival technology. The classification depends on how compatible
each players proposed new technology is with the current one:
o Evolution strategy When a company or alliance introduces new technology that is
compatible with the old. This strategy is based on offering a superior performance with
minimal consumer switching or adoption costs.

16

o Revolution strategy when a company or alliance introduces new technology that is

incompatiblewith the old. It is based on offering such compelling performance that
consumers are willing to incur significant switching or adoption costs.
o Rival Evolutions If both your technology and your rivals technology are compatible with
the older, but incompatible with each other.
o Evolution versus Revolution . If your technology offers backward compatibility and your
rivals doesnt. This war is a contest between the backward compatibility of the
Evolution strategy and the superior performance of the Revolution. It includes the
important case of an upstart fighting against an established technology that is offering
compatible upgrades.
o Rival Revolutions If neither technology is backward compatible.
Your ability to successfully wage a standards wars depends on your ownership of seven
assets. If you own these assets, your value-added to other players is high. Some assets,
however, may even be more valuable in peace than in war (such as the ability to innovate or
manufacturing capabilities). No asset is decisive.
Control over an installed base of users An incumbent firm that has a large base of loyal
locked-in customers in uniquely placed to pursue and Evolution strategy offering
backward compatibility.
Intellectual Property Rights Firms with patents and copyrights controlling valuable new
technology or interfaces are clearly in a strong position.
Ability to innovate The ability to make proprietary extensions in the future puts you in a
strong position today.
First-mover Advantages If you already have done a lot of product development work and
are farther down the learning curve than the competitors you are in a strong position.
Manufacturing Capabilities If you are a low-cost producer due to either scale economies
or manufacturing competence, you are in a strong position. Cost advantages can help
you survive a standards war or capture share competing to sell a standardized product.
Strength in Complements If you produce a product that is a significant complement for
the market in question, you will be strongly motivated to get the bandwagon rolling.
This too puts you in a natural leadership position, since acceptance of the new
technology will stimulate sales of the other products you produce.
Reputation and Brand Name A brand-name premium in any large market is highly
valuable. But reputation and brand name are especially valuable in network markets,
where expectation in pivotal. Its not enough to have the best product: you have to
convince consumers that you will win.
TACTICS
The logic of preemption is straightforward: build an early lead, so positive feedback
works for you and against your rival. The first firm to gain significant experience will have
lower costs and can pull even further ahead. The trick is to exploit positive feedback. With
learning-by-doing, the positive feedback is through lower costs. With network externalities, the
positive feedback comes on the demand side as the leader offers a more valuable product or
service. One way to preempt is simply to be the first to the market. Product development
and design skills can be critical in gaining a first-mover advantage. But early introduction can
also entail compromises in quality which can doom your product. Speed must come from
superior product design, not by marketing an inferior product. You also need to be
aggressive early on to build an installed base of customers. Find the pioneers who are most
keen to try the new technology. Pricing below cost is a common tactic to build an installed
base. Discounting to attract large, visible or influential customers is virtually unavoidable
in a standards war. You can also pay people to take your product if it can generate network
externalities for other paying customers.

17

The second key tactic in a standards war is the management of expectations. Expectations
are a major factor in consumer decision about whether or not to purchase a new technology.
Just as incumbents will try to knock down the viability of new technologies that emerge, so will
those very entrants strive to establish credibility. Vaporware is a classic tactic aimed at
influencing expectations: announce an upcoming product so as to freeze your rivals sales. The
most direct way to manage expectations is by assembling allies and by making grand claims
about your products current or future popularity.
ONCE YOUVE WON
How best to proceed when you actually won a standards war? There is a great deal of
room for strategy. Technology marches forward so you have to keep looking for the next
generation of technology. You may be especially vulnerable if you were victorious in one
generation of technology through a preemption strategy. Going early usually means
making technical compromises, which gives that much room for others to execute an
incompatible Revolution strategy against you. So you should not go early and then lack
flexibility to adapt. You can choose to harvest your installed base of customers. The
strategic implication is that you need a migration path or roadmap for your
technology. If you cannot improve your technology with time, while offering
substantial compatibility with olderversions, you will be overtaken sooner or later.
Rigidity is death, unless you build a really big installed based and even this will fade
away eventually without improvements.
To fend off challenges from upstarts you need to make it hard for rivals to execute a
Revolution strategy. The key is to anticipate the next generation of technology and
co-opt it. Look in all directions for the next threat and take advantage of the fact that
consumers will not switch to a new technology unless it offers a marked improvement in
performance. Anticipate or imitate improvements and incorporate them into
your products. Avoid being frozen in one place by your own success. If you cater too
closely to your installed base by emphasizing backward compatibility you open the door
for a revolution strategy by an upstart. Your product roadmap has to offer your
customers a smooth migration path to ever-improving technology and it must
also stay close to the cutting edge. Give old members of your installed base free or
inexpensive upgrades to a recent version of your product.
Once youve won you want to keep your network alive and healthy. Retain your franchise
as the market leader, but have a vibrant and competitive market for complements
to your product. Try to maintain a competitive market in complementary products and
avoid the temptation to meddle. Enter into these markets only if integration of your core
product with adjacent products adds value to consumers.
You may need to improve performance just to compete against your installed base,
even without an external threat. Drive innovation even faster. One way to grow even
after you have a large installed base is to start discounting as a means of attracting the
remaining customers that have relatively low willingness to pay for your product. But be
careful.
Once you have a strong installed base, basic principles of competitive strategy dictate
that you seek to leverage into adjacent product spaces, exploiting the key assets that
give you a unique ability to create value for consumers in those spaces. However, you
may be better off by encouraging healthy competition in complementary products,
which stimulates demand for your own product, rather than trying to dominate adjacent
spaces. Acquisition of companies selling neighboring products should be driven by true
synergies of bringing both products into the same company.
How can you secure a competitive advantage for yourself short of maintaining direct
control over the technology (for example through copyrights or patents)Even without
direct control of the installed base or ownership of key patents you may be able to make

18

the other factors work for you. You can build a bandwagon using an openness
approach of ceding current control over the technology while keeping control over
the improvements and extensions. If you know better than others how the
technology is likely to evolve, you can use this information to your advantage by
preserving important future rights. Developing proprietary extensions is a valuable
tactic to recapture at least partial control over your own technology. You may gain some
control later if you launch a technology that takes off and you can be the first to market
with valuable extensions and improvements. If you are too successful and demand for
your product grows too fast many of your resources may end up devoted to meeting
with current demand rather than investing in R&D for the future. If this happens you can
use all your profits to identifying and purchase firms that are producing nextgeneration products

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IF YOU FALL BEHIND

Usually it is not possible to wrestle leadership from another technology that is equally
good and more established. You may be able to protect a niche in the market but you
can always position yourself to make a run at leadership in the next generation of
technology.
A tried and true tactic when falling behind is to add an adapter or to somehow
interconnect with the larger network. This is good if the enhanced network,
externalities of plugging into a far larger network are substantial. However, sometimes
the larger network can keep you out. The biggest problems with adapters, when they
are technically and legally possible, is performance degradation. Adaptors and
converters among software programs are also highly imperfect as they can be buggy. Be
careful about the large network changing interface specifications to avoid compatibility.
The marginal cost of producing information goods is close to zero. This means that you
can cut your price very low and still cover incremental costs. Hence, when you find
yourself falling behind in a network industry, it is tempting to cut price in order to spur
sales survival pricing. However, this is unlikely to work. The problem is that the
purchase price of software is minor in comparison with the costs of deployment, training
and support.

Before you can craft standards strategy, you first need to understand what type of standards
war you are waging. The single most important factor to track is the compatibility between the
dueling new technologies and established products. Standards wars come in three types: Rival
Evolutions, Rival Revolutions and Revolution vs. Evolution. Strength in the standards game is
determined by ownership of critical assets: control of an installed base, intellectual property
rights, ability to innovate, first-mover advantages, manufacturing capabilities, presence in
complementary products, brand name and reputation. The main lessons for strategy and
tactics are:
-

Before you go to warm assemble allies. Youll need the support of consumers, suppliers of
complements, and even competitors. Not even the strongest companies can afford to go it
alone in a standards war.
Preemption is a critical tactic during a standards war. Rapid design cycles, early deals
with pivotal customers and penetration pricing are the building blocks of a preemption
strategy.
Managing consumer expectations is crucial in network markets. Your goal is to convince
customers and your complementors that you will emerge as the victor. Such
expectations can easily become a sell-fulfilling prophecy when network effects are strong.
To manage expectations you should engage in aggressive marketing, make early
announcements of new products, assemble allies, and make visible commitments to your
technology.
When youve won a war, dont rest easy. Cater to you own installed base and avoid
complacency. Dont let the desire for backward compatibility hobble your ability to improve
your product; doing so will leave you open to an entrant offering less compatibility but
superior performance. Commoditize complementary products to make your systems more
attractive to consumers.
If you fall behind, avoid survival pricing as it just signals weakness. A better tactic is to
establish a compelling performance advantage or to interconnect with the prevailing
standard using converters and adapters.

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Networks and Positive Feedback

The industrial economy was populated with oligopolies: industries in which few large firms
dominated the markets where market shares rose and fell only gradually. In contrast, the
information economy is populated by temporary monopolies. Hardware and software firms vie
for dominance, knowing that todays leading technology or architecture will, more likely than
not, be topped in short order by an upstart with superior technology. There is a central
difference between the old and new economies: the old industrial economy was driven by
economies of scale; the new information economy is driven by economies of networks.
The key concept is positive feedback. Success brings more success, which is the essence
of positive feedback. Failure breeds failure. This, too, is the essence of positive feedback. Why
is positive feedback so important in high-technology industries? The answer is organized
around the concept of a network. Whether real or virtual, networks have a fundamental
economic characteristic: the value of connecting to a network depends on the number
of other people already connected to it. Other things being equal, its better to be
connected to a bigger network than a smaller one.
POSITIVE FEEDBACK
The notion of positive feedback is crucial to understanding the economics of information
technology. Positive feedback makes the strong get stronger and the weak get weaker, leading
to extreme outcomes. Positive feedback in the marketplace leads to extremes: dominance of
the market by a single firm or technology.
The backward cousin of positive feedback is negative feedback. In a negative-feedback
system, the strong get weaker and the weak get stronger, pushing both towards a happy
medium. Attempts by the industry leader to capture share from smaller players would often
trigger vigorous responses as small players sought to keep capacity utilization from falling.
Such competitive responses prevent the leading firm from obtaining a dominant position.
Furthermore, past a certain size, companies found growth difficult owing to the sheer
complexity of managing a large enterprise. And as the larger firms become burdened with high
costs, smaller firms found profitable niches. The market found a balanced equilibrium rather
than heading toward the extreme of a single winner.
When two or more firms compete for a market where there is strong positive feedback, only
one may emerge as the winner. Such a market is tippy, meaning that it can tip in favor of one
player or another. In the most extreme form, positive feedback can lead to a winner-take-all
market in which a single firm or technology vanquishes all others. These dynamics are driven
by the strong desire of users to select the technology that ultimately will prevail that is, to
choose the network that has or will have the most users. The biggest winners in the
information economy, apart from consumers generally, are the companies that have launched
technologies that have been propelled forward by positive feedback. Positive feedback systems
follow a predictable pattern. We see the adoption of new technologies following an S-shaped
curve with three phases: (1) flat during launch, (2) a steep rise during take-off as positive
feedback kicks and (3) levelling off as saturation is reached.

Demand-side economies of scale virtually every industry goes through a positive

feedback phase early in its evolution. Traditional economies of scale , the supply-side
economies of scale, is when firms lower unit cost as their dimensions grows. Positive feedback
based on supply-side economies of scale runs into natural limits, at which point negative
feedback takes over. These limits often arise out of the difficulties of managing enormous
organizations. In the information economy, positive feedback has appeared in a more virulent
form based on the demand-side economies of scale, not just the supply side. Sometimes a
firms dominance is based on demand-side economies of scale. Customers value technologies

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or products that are widely used, the industry standard. Unlike the supply-side economies of
scale, demand-side economies of scale dont dissipate when the market gets large enough: if
everybody else is using a certain product that benefits from positive feedback than the more
reasons for someone to use it too. There is a virtuous cycle: the popular product with
many compatible users becomes more and more valuable to each user as it attracts
ever more users. In contrast, the product loses value as it is abandoned by users, a vicious
cycle. If consumers expect your product to become popular, a bandwagon will form, the
virtuous cycle will begin, and consumers expectations will prove correct. But if consumers
expect your product to flop, your product will lack momentum, the vicious cycle will take over,
and again consumers expectations will prove correct. Success and failure are driven as much
by consumer expectations and luck as the underlying value of the product. Marketing
strategy designed to influence consumer expectations is critical in network markets.
Being first to market usually helps but is not decisive. Nor are demand-side economies of scale
so strong that the loser necessarily departs from the field of battle. Both demand and supply
economies of scale have been around for a long time. But the combination of the two that has
arisen in many information technology industries is new. The result is a double whammy in
which growth on the demand side both reduces cost on the supply side and makes the product
more attractive to other users accelerating the growth in demand even more. The result is
specially string positive feedback.
NETWORK EXTERNALITIES
Network externalities means that large networks are more attractive to users than small ones.
The sponsor of a network creates and manages that network, hoping to profit by building its
size. Buyers are picking a network, not simply a product. Companies must design their
strategies accordingly. Building a network involves more than just building a product: finding
partners, building strategic alliances, and knowing how to get the bandwagon rolling can be
every bit as important as engineering design skills. Externalities arise when one market
participant affects other without compensation being paid. Positive network externalities give
rise to positive feedback: when I join a network, the value of the network is enhanced since it is
now bigger.
Collective switching costs Network externalities make it virtually impossible for a small
network to thrive. The challenge to companies seeking to introduce new but incompatible
technology into the market is to build network size by overcoming the collective switching
costs, the combined switching costs of all users. In many information industries, collective
switching costs are the biggest single force working in favor of incumbents. Control
over a large installed base of users can be the greatest asset you can have. The collective
switching costs are far higher than all of our individual switching costs because coordination is
so difficult. However, the internet distribution of new applications and standards is very
convenient and reduces some of the network externalities for software by reducing switching
costs.
Is your industry subject to positive feedback?
Not all information infrastructure markets are dominated by forces of positive feedback. Not
every market tips. If your market is a true winner-take-all market subject to such tipping,
standardization may be critical for the market to take off at all. Whether a market tips or not
depends on the balance between two fundamental forces: economies of scale and variety.
Strong scale economies, on either the demand side or the supply side of the market, will make
a market tippy. But standardization typically entails a loss of variety. If different users have
highly different needs, the market is less likely to tip. The strongest positive feedback in
information industries comes on the demand side, but you should not ignore the supply side in
assessing tipping. Traditional economies of scale that are specific to each technology will
amplify demand-side economies of scale.

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Igniting Positive Feedback: PERFORMANCE VS. COMPATIBILITY

Building your own base of users for a new technology in the face of an established network can
be daunting. Without a compelling reason to switch, consumers refuse to adopt new
technologies. There are two basic approaches doe dealing with the problem of consumer
inertia: the evolution strategy of compatibility and the revolution strategy of
compelling performance. These strategies reflect an underlying tension when the forces of
innovation meet up with network externalities: is it better to wipe the slate clean and come up
with the best product possible (revolution) or to give up some performance to ensure
compatibility and thus ease consumer adoption (evolution)? You can improve performance at
the cost of increasing customer switching costs, or vice versa. Ideally, you would like to have
an improved product that is also compatible with the installed base, but technology is not
usually so forgiving, and the adapters and emulators are notoriously buggy. You will inevitably
face the performance/compatibility tradeoff.
Evolution: Offer a Migration Path compatibility with the installed base of
equipment is often critical to the launch of a new generation of technology. When compatibility is
critical, consumers must be offered a smooth migration path to a new information technology. The
evolution strategy, which offers consumers an easy migration path, centers on reducing switching
costs so that consumers can gradually try your new technology. In virtual networks, the evolution
strategy of offering consumers a migration path requires an ability to achieve compatibility with
existing products. In real networks, the evolution strategy requires physical interconnection to existing
networks. They key to the evolution strategy is to build a new technology by linking it to the old one.
One of the risks of following the evolution approach is that one of your competitors may try a
revolution strategy for its product. Compromising performance to ensure backward compatibility may
leave an opening for a competitor to come in with a technologically superior product. You need to
develop a technology that is at the same time compatible with, and superior to, existing products. Only
in this way you can keep customers switching costs low, by offering backward compatibility, and still
offer improved performance.
One way to deal with the compatibility/performance tradeoff is to offer one-way compatibility.
Your strategy with respect to selling upgrades should be to give the users a reason to upgrade
and then to make the process of upgrading as simple as possible. In order to smooth user
migration paths to new technology you can use creative designs, think in terms of the system
and consider converters and bridge technologies. Another obstacle has to do with legal and
contractual reasons: you need to have or obtain the legal right to sell products that are
compatible with the established installed base of products. Incumbents with intellectual
property rights over an older generation of technology may have the ability to unilaterally
blockade a migration path.

Revolution: Offer Compelling Performance the revolution strategy involves

brute force: offer a product so much better than what people are using that enough users will bear the
pain of switching to it. This strategy works by first attracting customers who care the most about
performance and working down from there to the mass market. The trick is to offer compelling
performance to first attract pioneering and influential users, then to use this base to start up a
bandwagon propelled by self-fulfilling consumer beliefs in the inevitable success of your product.
Substantial improvements in performance are necessary to make the revolution strategy work. A
growing market offers more opportunities to establish a beachhead against an established player. New
customers alone can provide critical mass. A rapidly growing market tends to enhance the
attractiveness of the revolution strategy. It is inherently risky. It cannot work on a small scale and
usually requires powerful allies. But even the successful technologies start off slowly and accelerate
from there, following the logistic, or S-shaped, growth pattern.

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Anyone launching a new technology must also face a second fundamental tradeoff, in addition
to the performance/compatibility tradeoff. Do you choose an open approach by offering to
make the necessary interfaces and specifications available to others, or do you attempt to
maintain control by keeping your system proprietary? Proprietary control will be exceedingly
valuable if your product or system takes off. An installed base is more valuable if you do not
face rivals who can offer products to locked-in customers. Likewise, your network is far more
valuable if you can control the ability of others to interconnect with you. However, failure to
open up a technology can spell its demise, if customers fear lock-in or if you face a strong rival
whose system offers comparable performance but is nonproprietary. Openness will bolster your
chances of success by attracting allies and assuring would-be customers that they will be able
to turn to multiple suppliers down the road. Which route is the best, openness or control? The
answer depends on whether you are strong enough to ignite positive feedback om your
own. Remember that your goal is to maximize the value of your technology, not your control
over it. The total value added to the industry depends first on the inherent value of the
technology what improvement it offers over existing alternatives. But when network effects
are strong, total value also depends on how widely the technology is adopted that is, the
network size. To maximize the value of your new technology you will likely have to share that
value with other players in the industry. Opening up the technology freely can fuel positive
feedback and maximize the total value added of the technology. But the boundary between
openness and control is not sharp.
Openness the openness strategy is critical when no one firm is strong enough to
dictate technology standards by itself. Openness also arises naturally when multiple products
work together. The underlying idea is to forsake control over the technology to get the
bandwagon rolling as the whole is greater than the sum of parts. You can choose a full
openness strategy, where anybody has the right to make products complying with the
standard, whether they contributed to its development or not, or choose an alliance strategy,
where each member of the alliance contributes with something toward the standard and, in
exchange, each is allowed to make products complying with the standard.
Control only those in the strongest position can hope to exert strong control
over newly introduced information technologies. Companies strong enough to unilaterally
control product standards and interfaces have power but they have much to lose by promoting
poorly conceived standards.

STRATEGIES IN NETWORK MARKETS

Performance Play is the boldest and riskiest of the four generic strategies. It involves
the introduction of a new incompatible technology over which the vendor retains strong proprietary
control. It makes the most sense if your advantage is primarily based on the development of a striking
new technology that offers users substantial advantages over existing technology.
Controlled Migration consumers are offered a new and improved technology that is
compatible with their existing technology, but is proprietary. If you have secure domination in your
market you can introduce the new technology as a premium version of the old technology, selling it
first to those who find the improvements most valuable.
Open Migration is very friendly to consumers as the new product is supplied by many
vendors and requires little by way of switching costs. It makes most sense if your primarily advantage
is based on manufacturing capabilities. In that case, you will benefit from a larger total market and an
agreed-upon set of specifications, which will allow your manufacturing skills and economies of scale to
shine.

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Discontinuity refers to a situation where a new product or technology is incompatible

with existing technology but is available from multiple suppliers. It favors suppliers that are efficient
manufacturers or that are best placed to provide value-added services or software enhancements.

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(Slides and Summaries Class 3)

In general, industries are subject to supply-side economies of scale (traditional economies

of scale). Larger firms tend to have lower units costs but this has natural limits and at some point there
are diminishing returns. This creates oligopolies. In addition, some industries are also subject to
demand-side economies of scale, or network externalities. These are constituted by benefits bounded
by the size of the market and where a firm controls the market for some time (monopoly).
Externality action by a producer on a consumer that affects other producers or
consumers and is not reflected in the market price.
Network externality when the products benefits to each individual user increases with
the number of users. There are direct externalities, where there are network benefits and other users
are required to have value (connectedness) and indirect externalities, where the value is in having
other consumers have inter-operable products (to be part of a system).
Early adoption rates are too slow. The potential adopter would confer greater benefits on
society than she herself realizes. She ignores these external benefits until her private marginal benefit
exceeds her private marginal cost.
Excess inertia means that viable, differentiated products dont get users. Even if another
network would be superior for all users, no one wants to be the first to leave the existing technology.
Lock in happens when there are investments in multiple complementary and durable
assets that lock a user in a particular technology/system. This means that there are high switching
costs. To be unlocked the value proposition has to be high.
To attract users to a network firms can: commit to provide complementary goods, look for
alliances, joint ventures or large commitments with customers to jump-start the size of the network,
use penetration pricing or low access price to build up the network, manage expectations (for example
by creating vaporware) and refrain from exploiting installed bases so not to extract every last cent they
can from existing customers.
In order to influence switching costs firms must pay attention to compatibility with
existing equipment, transaction costs to switching suppliers, the cost of learning how to use a new
brand/product/inputs and the uncertainty about the quality of untested brands or inputs.
Architecture refers to the ownership and control of the standards, rules and protocols that
govern how technology products work and work together. Owning and controlling the architecture that
is critical to the operation of a class of products is an example of having added value. But having a lot
of added value is not sufficient for being able to obtain a lot of profits.
Good products are not enough, implementation matters.
Successful architecture is proprietary but open.
After winning a firm should stay on guard, offer migration paths (lower barriers of entry to
those outside the system), commoditize complementary assets, leverage the installed base and stay a
leader.
Network externalities happen on the consumer side and it means that a user benefits
more of a product because other consumers also use it. I make a decision about joining a market. I
make it based on my own benefits. But the fact that other people are joining a network brings an
external benefit to the entire network. That is a network externality because it is not factored in the
decision.
It is difficult to overcome the power of network externalities and that is why incumbents
have huge market shares until some other competitor can give performance increases with somewhat
low switching costs.
In markets that benefit from network externalities and positive feedback one system
tends to be dominant and the others are small players.

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Class 3 Foursquare Case

Business Model

Location-based services company

They are working for users that get some types of benefits. A lot of these benefits are
related with network externalities because there is interaction among the users of the platform and the
value depends on how many users and how many venues use the application:
o Communicate with friends (strong same-side NE because it has to do with interaction
between the users themselves)
o Information about locations (NE, same side)
o Gaming experience (NE, depending on the nature of the game)
o Benefits from shops (NE, cross-side because we have the users and the venues and
interaction between the two sides)
o Challenge themselves (no NE)
o Feedback from other users (NE, same side)
Venues
o Attract new customers (the more users you have the more visibility you
get, NE)
o Keep customers loyal (NE, cross-side)
o Analyze competition by studying patterns
o New tool, especially for small and medium enterprises
o Customer analysis/information (NE, if only few users are using
foursquare not a lot of conclusions can be taken)
o If you are ahead of the competition by using this while they are not you
get some sort of advantage.
What explains their growth?
This was a clear pre dominant design time and here there needs to be a lot of learning and and
iterative process with users.
They generated a service with potential value for users and venues
The value is going to depend on how many users use the platform on both sides
First mover advantage
Previous experience with dodgeball
Customer base + pool of ideas
Focused approach
Smart launch (SXSW) and had an immediate effect because it was launched in a social
environment and they could expand their initial customer base
- Postpone monetization
- Focus on user/venue benefit and on leveraging the network externalities
- Learning oriented approach, very careful about where the opportunities were, they were
very vigilant and aggressive on that front because they were always very close to
customers
- Extended platforms
- Took appropriate risks
- Establishment of an API, you start competing as a community and not as a single firm.
The API provides an opportunity for people to build the platform
- Clear vision of the future
- Partnerships with key brands which increased brand awareness and credibility. This is a
very good way to create legitimacy. Being a small unknown company this is important to
gain big known brands on your side
- Strong VC support
- Good control of the platform
- User + venue content generation
Is growth important? Why?
-

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Its important because of convergence on one or few firms in markets with

network externalities. The race for scale is important because a winner takes
all situation is very likely to happen.
The bigger the network the more valuable it is.
Because of the nature of this market it is likely that only one or few firms will
survive.
What are the issues that contribute for only one firm to survive?
o The strength of network externalities is very high (the stronger the NE
are the more likely it is that we converge into one firm/ecosystem)
o Costs of multihoming how costly it is for users and venues to work in
different providers. Early adopters are willing to pay the cost of
multihoming but the higher the costs of multihoming the more likely it is
to just have one platform. To lower the costs of multihoming the firm
should let other platforms create synergies with it by leveraging their
own customer base
o Compatibility
o Demand for differentiated services the more differentiation is
demanded the more providers there will be. In this case the bulk of the
market is pretty much the same. Some people like gaming but most of
them probably just wants to connect with their friends

What now?
How should foursquare monetize? They should attract more customers or more elements to the
network first because they should make sure they do not drive users and venues away. So they
should continue to build the network, work more on usage and have a clear differentiation
strategy because when bigger players start entering this game they need to make sure they
have a clear differentiated value proposition.
What can happen?
Either they launch something and become the dominant design, they get bought or they build
sufficient differentiated space in order to compete with facebook, google and other giants.

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Class 4
Managing Intellectual Capital
If there are innovators who lose, there must be followers and/or imitator who win. Successful
followers may in turn lose in the next generation to even later followers.
The most fundamental reason why innovators with good marketable ideas fail to enter or open
up markets successfully is that they are operating in an environment where new technology
is difficult to protect and this constrains their ability to appropriate the economic benefits
arising from their ideas. Patents do now work in practice as they do in theory and they are
specially ineffective at protecting process innovations. Often patents provide little protection
because the legal and financial requirements for upholding their validity or for proving their
infringement are high. In some industries, particularly where the innovation is embedded in
processes, trade secrets are a viable alternative to patents. Moreover, the degree to which
knowledge about an innovation in tacit or easily codified also affects the ease of imitation. Tacit
knowledge is, by definition, difficult to articulate and so is hard to pass on unless those who
possess the know-how can demonstrate it to others. It is also hard to protect using intellectual
property. Codified knowledge is easier to transmit and receive and easier to protect using the
instruments of intellectual property law.

Simplistically then, we can divide appropriability regimes into weak (innovations

are difficult to protect because they can be easily codified and legal protection
of intellectual property is ineffective) and strong (innovations are easy to
protect because knowledge about them is tacit and/or they are well protected
legally). Strong appropriability is the exception rather than the rule. Innovators who try to
enter markets where intellectual protection is good have a reasonable chance of winning
commercially; in weak regimes they often lose. Innovators must adopt clever market entry
strategies if they are to keep imitators and other followers at bay.~
BEFORE THE EMERGENCE OF A DOMINANT DESIGN

The best market entry strategies for innovators with good, marketable ideas depend not only
on the appropriability regime, but also where the industry is in in its development cycle. The
existence of a dominant design is of great importance to the strategic positions of
the innovator and its competitors. Once a dominant design emerges, competition migrates
to price and away from design fundamentals. Competitive success then shifts to a whole new
set of variables. Scale and learning become much more important, and specialized capital is
deployed as incumbents seek to lower unit costs through exploiting economies of scale and
learning. The product/process innovation cycle does not characterize all industries. It seems
more suited to mass markets where customer tastes are relatively homogeneous. It is less
characteristic of small niche markets where the absence of economies of scale and learning
attaches much less of a penalty to multiple designs.
Strong Appropriability None of these threats need unduly worry an innovator who is
preparing to enter a market with relevant technology which is inherently difficult to replicate
and/or has a good intellectual property protection, because the innovator knows that the ideas
possessed must form some part of the eventual dominant design. Even if the innovator comes
to market in this early phase with a sound product concept but the wrong design, good
intellectual property protection may afford the time needed to perform trials needed to get the
design right. If the innovator possesses an impenetrable thicket of patents or has technology

29

which is simply difficult to copy, then the market may well afford the innovator the necessary
time to ascertain the right design without being eclipsed by imitators.
Weak AppropriabilityIn the early design development of an industry with weak
appropriability, the innovator has to recognize that imitators may enter the fray, modifying the
product in important ways, yet relying on the fundamental designs pioneered by the innovator.
When imitation is possible and occurs in conjunction with design modification before the
emergence of a dominant design, followers have a good chance of having their modified
product anointed as the industry standard, often to the great disadvantage of the innovator. In
this situation the innovator must be careful to let the basic design float until sufficient evidence
has accumulated that a design has been delivered which is likely to become the industry
standard. The reason for letting the design float is that once a heavy capital investment is
committed to a particular design, the innovator will have created irreversibilities that will prove
to be a sever handicap if the initial guesses with respect to what the market wants turn out to
be wrong. In summary, the probability may be low that an innovator in a market with weak
appropriability will enter possessing the dominant design. The probability will be higher the
lower the cost of prototyping and he more tightly linked the firm is to the market.
AFTER THE EMRGENCE OF A DOMINANT DESIGN
If the innovator is still in the game when the dominant design has emerged then the company
has to secure access to complementary assets.The successful commercialization of an
innovation requires that the know-how in question be utilized in conjunction with the services
of other assets such as marketing, competitive manufacturing and after-sales support. On the
other hand, successful commercialization of the innovation may depend critically on a
bottleneck asset which has only one possible supplier. There is the possibility of
cospecialization where the innovation and the assets depend on each other. The main
decision the innovator has to make is what to do with respect to complimentary assets. Two
pure types stand out:
-

At one extreme the innovator could integrate into (build or acquire) all of the necessary
complementary assets. But this is likely to be unnecessary and expensive.
At the other extreme, the innovator could attempt to access these assets through
straightforward contractual relationships, but this exposes the innovator to various hazards
and dependencies that he may well wish to avoid.

Contractual Modes
The vantage of collaborative agreements whereby the innovator contracts with
independent suppliers, manufacturers or distributors are obvious. The innovator will not have
to make the up-front capital expenditures needed to build or buy the assets in question. This
reduces risk as well as cash requirements. Also, they add credibility to the innovator, especially
if he relatively unknown while the contractual partner is already established and viable. Even
for established companies, strategic partnering is essential, enabling companies to learn things
they could not have learned without many years of trial and error. This might lead them to miss
the market window. But they must keep control of their intellectual property. Smaller, less
integrated companies are often eager to sign on with established firms because of the name
recognition and reputation.
However, it is important to note that strategic partnering makes the company exposed to
certain hazards, particularly for the innovator, and especially when he is trying to use
contracts to gain access to special capabilities. It may be difficult to induce suppliers to make
costly, irreversible commitments which depend on the success of the innovation. Making these
alliances is inviting the partners to take risks along with the innovator.There is the added

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danger that the partner wont perform according to the innovators perception of what the
contract requires and also the risk that the partner may imitate the innovators technology and
attempt to compete with him. This possibility is particularly acute if the provider of the
complimentary asset is uniquely situated with respect to the complimentary assets in question
and has the capacity to absorb and imitate the technology.

Integration Modes
Integration modes, which by definition involve equity participation, are distinguished from pure
contractual modes in that they typically facilitate greater control and access to commercial
information. Owning rather than renting the requisite specialized assets has clear advantages
when the complimentary assets are in fixed supply over the relevant time period. However an
innovator may not have the time to acquire or build the complimentary assets that ideally he
would like to control. This is particularly true when the imitation is easy, so timing becomes
crucial. Or he may not have the financial resources to proceed. Innovators need to rank
complementary, specialized assets as to their importance. If the assets are critical, ownership
is warranted. When imitation is easy, strategic moves to build or buy complementary assets
which are specialized must occur with due reference to the moves of competitors. There is no
point in moving to building a specialized asset of ones imitator can do it faster and cheaper. In
industries experiencing rapid technological change, technologies advance so rapidly that it is
unlikely that a single company has the full range of expertise needed to bring advanced
products to the market in a timely and cost effective fashion. Hence, the integration issue is not
just a small firm issue.

Mixed Modes
The real world rarely provides extreme or pure causes. Decisions to integrate or license involve
trade-offs, compromises and mixed approaches. There are blends of contracting and
integration. Sometimes mixed modes represent transitional phases. In different industries firms
are discovering that they lack capabilities in the others. Since interdependence of some of
them, this requires collaboration, coordination and information flows.

OUTCOMES OF MARKET ENTRY STRATEGIES

The key decision the innovator has to make after the emergence of a dominant design is what
to do with complimentary assets contract for their use, integrate to control them, or
something in between. The innovators best strategy and chance of success will depend on:
o Appropriability regime: weak or strong
o The interdependence between the innovator (and the imitators) and the owners of
complimentary assets
o The innovators competitive position vis--vis potential imitators with respect to his ability
to access complementary assets
The last point can represent a major problem for the innovator when the potential imitators
already own the complementary assets. It is sometimes observed that many small firms which
generate new, commercially valuable competency-enhancing technology fail, while large
multinational firms, often with a less meritorious record with respect to innovation, survive and
prosper. Large firms are more likely to possess the relevant specialized assets within their
boundaries, so that extraction of profits from innovation is likely to be more complete and
survival more assured if innovation is competency enhancing. Small domestic firms are less
likely to have the relevant specialized assets within their boundaries and so will have to incur
the expense either of trying to build them or of trying to develop coalitions with

31

competitors/owners of the specialized assets. This does not stem form size itself, but from the
portfolio of specialized assets that big firms are likely to control.
- The best situation is, of course, where appropriability is strong, the innovation is
competency enhancing and the innovator is strongly placed with regard to the relevant
complementary assets.
- Contractual strategies are appropriate whenever imitation is difficult and the innovator is
well placed with regard to the suppliers of complementary assets. However, the
innovators chances of winning diminish as appropriability weakens and imitators are
better positioned with respect to commissioning the complementary assets.
- The most difficult decision for innovators occur when the owners of complementary
assets are strongly placed (because there are few suppliers, the asset in question being
a critical bottleneck in the market entry programme) and the innovation can only be
exploited in conjunction with the asset but not vice versa.
- In the worst case, when imitators are better placed (for example because they own the
relevant assets) and imitation is easy, the innovator cannot afford the risk of committing
substantial resources to integrating. The firm should contract to limit its exposure, but
this will further reduce the already low chances of winning, and if it wins, the asset
owner will be ideally placed in the future to extract maximum benefits from the
contract.
Unfortunately, all too often in the real world of international commerce, legal and technical
protection is weal, complementary assets (like specialized marketing and selling systems) are
more important than the innovation itself, and they are in the hands of potential competitors.
In the end, smart choices may not guarantee success. If an innovator chooses to integrate when
it should have contracted (or not even enter the game), it will certainly commit more resources
than needed for no additional strategic benefit. Conversely, if the innovator contracts when it
should integrate it may never get into the game because an imitator may cut the innovation out.
The asset supplier will always be in a position to extort maximum benefits from the innovator
whenever a contract fails.
Lessons for management:

The probability of successful commercialization can be analyzed rationally in advance .

focus R&D on delivering innovations which will have a good chance of benefiting you
rather than competitors;
In the early design phase, stay particularly close to the market and keep option open. Try
to get your design accepted as the industry standard, but be flexible enough if some other
standard is adopted;
Identify the relevant specialized complementary assets early, and decide in advance
whether you can contract for their use, or need to start integrating to control them;
Monitor your competitors, and recognize that your toughest competitor may not be an
imitator but someone who owns important complementary assets;
If you develop an order-of-magnitude innovation which will probably lose you money to
exploit find a strategic partner or sell the idea out before committing further resources
you will not be able to recover;
Strength in one area of technology will not necessarily compensate for weaknesses
elsewhere. As technology becomes more public and less proprietary, dynamic capabilities
and strength in manufacturing and other capabilities are necessary to derive advantage
from whatever technology an innovator may possess.

Even with a terrific product, the innovator is likely to lose unless its intellectual property is
extremely well protected and/or it is strategically well positioned with respect to key
complementary assets. It will never be enough to have the best science and engineering

32

establishment and the most creative engineers and designers. Since the fruits of scientific
effort are increasingly open to imitation, extracting value from a nations scientific and
engineering prowess will require its firms to have good access to competitive capacities in
certain of the key complementary assets, such as manufacturing. Public policies that dont
recognize that translating scientific and technological leadership into commercial leadership in
most cases requires parallel excellence in capacities complementary to the innovation process
will doom a nation to economic decline. It is the complementary capacities and dynamic
capabilities which must be built if a nation with the technological lead is also to lay claim to
commercial lead.
Lessons for governments of innovation nations:

Pay attention to intellectual property protection domestically and internationally;

Enterprise adaptability is critical, requiring fluid labor markets and entrepreneurial
management;
Recognize that science and technology alone will not provide enough of a foundation to
guarantee economic growth. Targeting the innovation process also requires attention to
capacities complementary to innovation;
Access to foreign markets is critical to innovators, particularly if protected foreign firms
are imitators or followers. The importance of access transcends the incremental profits in
the foreign market, as access can serve to check imitators, especially when imitators
possess critical complementary assets not currently owned by the innovator;
Strength in capacities complementary to R&D will promote economic welfare where
imitation is easy.

33

The product market and the market for ideas: commercialization

strategies for technology entrepreneurs
There has been a dramatic increase in investment technology entrepreneurship and in the
development of inventions and technology with significant potential commercial application. A
key management challenge is how to translate promising technologies into a stream of
economic returns. The problem is not so much the invention but the commercialization.
Sometimes the commercialization strategy involves direct entry into the market. On the other
hand, many technology entrepreneurs have secured extraordinary returns by integrating their
innovations into an existing value chain, often involving intimate cooperation with established
industry players.
A crucial factor determining patterns of competitive interaction between start-up innovators
and established firms is the presence of absence of a market for ideas. The absence of a
market for ideas reduces the ability of some entrepreneurs to earn returns on their inventions
and it eliminates incentives for startup innovation. Markets for ideas play a crucial role in
shaping commercialization strategy and industry dynamics.
There are two central elements in the commercialization environment: the nature of the
appropriability environment and the distribution of ownership and control over specialized
complementary assets, such as distribution and manufacturing capabilities, or a brand-name
reputation. The innovators share of the value created by her innovation will be smaller when
appropriability is weak (due to imitation by competitors) or when specialized complementary
assets are controlled by other players. For many startup innovators, those firms that control
key complementary assets are precisely those that are more likely and/or most effective
potential imitators. A principal hazard in pursuing cooperation with complementary asset
owners is the possibility that these owners are current product market players with incentive to
expropriate the innovators technology and commercialize it themselves. As a result,
commercialization strategy for startup innovators often presents a tradeoff between
establishing a novel value chain and competing against established firms versus
leveraging an existing value chain and earning returns through the market for ideas.
Whereasmost previous strategic analysis highlights the level of appropriability as a driver of
strategic choice, this framework suggests that the key driver of an effective commercialization
strategy should be the type of appropriability (for example, whether appropriability is based
on formal intellectual property rights such as patents versus informal mechanisms such as
secrecy). Even when tight secrecy offers a strong appropriability environment, transacting in
the market for ideas will often undermine that secrecy and increase the potential for
expropriation. In contrast, when the innovator controls form intellectual property rights such as
a patent, the potential for expropriation will be reduced and the innovator is likely to find a
cooperation strategy more attractive. A weak intellectual property environment increases the
relative returns to competition over cooperation. Hence, the potential for disruptive
technologies to overturn established sources of market power is higher in environments with
weaker intellectual property protection.
A startup that is looking to launch its product independently must develop key capabilities and
acquire complementary assets to ensure that the innovation offers a novel customer value
proposition. Several difficulties confront technology entrepreneurs implementing a product
market-focused commercialization strategy. The startup innovator must undertake aggressive
investments, manage multiple dimensions of uncertainty and focus scarce organizational
resources on establishing a market presence. The startup must simultaneously persuade
customers of their novel value proposition while avoiding detection and an aggressive
response by established players. A product market strategy requires that the

34

technology entrepreneur offers an integrated value proposition and avoids detection

and a competitive reaction from established market players.
The main alternative to competing directly in the product market is through a cooperation
strategy that is composed of identifying and executing agreements with other firms usually
incumbents who serve as conduits for commercializing technology to the product market.
However, negotiations take place in the shadow of potential product market competition. That
is, the value derived from cooperation increases with the threat posed by the startup innovator
to the product market position of the established firm. The startup can formally license
intellectual property to one or more idea buyers. The key element of licensing is that both the
startup and licensees cooperate in commercialization while maintaining organizational
independence. At another extreme, the markers for ideas may operate through acquisitions of
startups innovators by established firms. As well, intermediate contracting relationships are
possible, from joint ventures to strategic educational alliances to milestone financing. The
key point is that any form of cooperation strategy has the impact of limiting investment by the
startup in downstream commercialization, muting potential product market competition
between startup innovators and incumbent firms.
Commercializing through the market for ideas confers
several benefits, allowing buyers and sellers of technology to soften downstream product
market competition, avoid duplicative investment, and engage in complementary technology
development. Cooperation reinforces established market power and softens market
competition. As well, transactions in the market for ideas allow startup innovators to avoid sunk
investments in complementary assets necessary for commercialization. At the same time,
established firms avoid investments in imitative research programs necessary for catching-up
to the new market entrant.
However, several forces counter the benefits from
contracting, discouraging collaboration. The most fundamental friction arises from the
paradox of disclosure as disclosure increases the buyers intrinsic valuation but reduces the
inventors bargaining power. The disclosure of information shifts the bargaining power form the
sellers to the buyers of knowledge. This can be soften if precise intellectual property rights are
available. However, the operation and effectiveness of a market for ideas depends crucially on
whether startup innovator can credibly threaten to compete with potential partners. Moreover,
technology entrepreneurs must overcome the costs of identifying and accessing appropriate
partners. In this matter, venture capitalists play an important role as they lower the cost for
startup innovators of pursuing a cooperative commercialization strategy. But perhaps the key
potential hazard facing a startup innovator is the potential for expropriation by potential idea
buyers. Two alternative appropriability mechanisms intellectual property protection and
technology design may allow a firm to disclose technology while preserving bargaining power
as certain technology designs have the benefit of displaying functionality while masking details
that would allow imitation.
The control over costly-to-build complementary assets is a key wedge between the capabilities
of a startup and more established firms in an industry, and the inability to acquire these
resources cost-effectively has an important impact in the returns earned by a startup innovator.
Specifically, when specialized complementary assets are required, sunk costs of product
market entry become substantial. When considering commercialization strategy choice, an
increase in the importance or concentration of control of complementary assets raises the
relative returns to cooperation over competition. Thus, even though an increase in the
importance of complementary assets reduces the absolute share of total value earned by the
innovator, this factor will tend to encourage collaboration with more established firms over
direct and independent entry into the product market.

35

 The attackers advantage In an environment with poor intellectual property

protection and where incumbents do not control the complementary assets necessary
for effective commercialization established firms have the opportunity to imitate once
they recognize the nascent threat and competition is likely to be intense. While
entrepreneurs have the opportunity to overturn established positions, easy imitability
gives most startups a very small share of the value over the long term. But there are
few opportunities for contracting with current market leaders. In this case stealth is a
crucial element of en effective competition-oriented commercialization strategy. A
stealth strategy is to position the technology in the market in order to exploit the blind
spot of current market leaders. Successful commercialization of these disruptive
innovations is accomplished by careful positioning of the new technology towards
underserved customer groups- Established firms focus on responding to the needs and
requirements of current customers and that makes them particularly vulnerable to entry
emphasizing new customer segments.
Ideas factories Standing in complete contrast is an environment where successful
invention precludes effective development by more established firms but those firms
control the complementary assets for effective commercialization. Were the
appropriability regime is strong and incumbents have the complementary
assets we expect the emergence of ideas factories technological leaders focusing
on research and commercializing throughreinforcing partnerships with more
downstream players. The key issue is no longer whether to pursue a cooperation
strategy but when and how in order to promote bidding wars and try to extract the
maximum economic benefits. When markets for ideas exist, a high rate of innovation
by startups research-oriented firms is associated with the reinforcement of incumbent
market power.
Reputation-based ideas trading Here the appropriability regime is weak and
incumbents control the key complementary assets. In this environment the disclosure
problem is severe. Though a market for ideas would confer a potential mutual gain a
cooperative solution is difficult to achieve because established firms are tempted to
expropriate the technology revealed to them. This expropriation discourages startups
from pursuing collaboration as a strategy and additionally discourages research in the
first place since competition is likely to be unprofitable. But an established firm can
develop a reputation for fairness, thus encouraging future startups to approach them
with promising new technologies. But while individual established firms may engage in
reputation-based ideas trading, the extent of the market may depend on third parties
such as venture capitalists who act on behalf of startups
Greenfield competition Where incumbent complementary assets are unimportant
and the appropriability regime is strong, the power to determine the most effective
commercialization strategy lies with the innovator. While the potential for returns in the
product market are high (since imitation is difficult), this market power will be reflected
in increased bargaining powers with potential partners. As a result, the relative returns
to competition over cooperation will depend on factors distinct from the intrinsic value
of the technology. Both competition and cooperation strategies can be effective. The
ability to control the development and evolution of platforms and standards may be
decisive. For example, tight control over the technology may allow a technology
entrepreneur to ensure compatibility with future generations of the technology; as a
result, investments to control the key elements of the value chain may be worthwhile.
On the other hand, when there are few opportunities to leverage the current technology
as a platform for future generations, an open system may be more effective.
Technology entrepreneurs must analyze the opportunities for future hazards associated

36

with cooperation and competition at each stage of the value chain, with the result that
the optimal strategy may involve intermediate level of integration.
Firms opportunistically take advantage of potential revenue opportunities as they present
themselves, rather than choosing a strategy that focuses resources and attention towards
activities most likely to yield the highest long-term return. The ability to extract value from the
innovation ultimately depends on the customer value proposition, rather than the simple
offering of the technology itself
.
Cooperation Is much more likely to be chosen by firms able to acquire intellectual property
protection or for whom control over complementary assets is not cost-effective. The key to an
effective cooperation strategy is to initiate cooperation at a point where technological
uncertainty is sufficiently low but sunk costs have not yet become substantial. At the heart of a
competition strategy is the ability to delay the timing when established firms recognize the
threat posed by the novel value proposition offered by the technology entrepreneur. If
detection is sufficiently early, established firms can respond and adapt the entrepreneurs
technology in order to take advantage of their competencies and specific positioning.
Strategies such as targeting niche customer segments allow a startup innovator to delay
detection until they are ready to compete head-to-head with incumbents a stealth
commercialization strategy achieves this objective.
Key aspects of the commercialization environment drive entrepreneurs to choose
between cooperation and competition, and these strategies impact the evolution of
market structure. When intellectual property protection is strong and important
specialized complementary assets are held by incumbent firms, startups generate more
innovative rents if they pursue cooperative options with incumbent firms rather than
competing directly in product markets. As a result, changes in technological leadership
need not result in changes in market leadership. In contrast, when weak intellectual
property for innovation exists alongside low barriers to entry, competitive
commercialization strategies are more likely. A clear understanding of this environment
leads startup innovators to exploit the blind spots of incumbent players. As a result, the
failure to recognize threats to market leadership may often be the result of an active
stealth strategy on the part of entrepreneurs.
While intellectual property protection provides a valuable asset, it also serves to enhance
the creation of a market for ideas. Consequently, it allows for cooperation between
startups and incumbents who might otherwise view innovation purely as a competitive
threat. This serves as an opportunity for incumbents to tap the high-powered incentives,
creativity and flexibility traditionally associated with small firms.
If entrepreneurial innovation undermines existing incumbent assets, the returns of
cooperation are reduced in favor of competition. In contrast, the fact that a technology
is disruptive should not be decisive if key complementary assets remain with
established players. In this situation, an incumbents competitive position may often be
enhanced rather than threatened by startup innovation.
Stronger intellectual property protection allows innovators to earn greater rents by
improving their contracting operations and not simply by granting them market power.
That is, such policies alleviate the problems of disclosure allowing startup firms to
consider contracting options without fear of expropriation.

37

(Slides and Summaries Class 4)

The profits from innovation go for the innovator, imitators

and other followers, suppliers, other
complementary assets and customers.

owners

If a firm closely tracks competitors, it can launch the same

products in the market and save in development costs.
If entrants and incumbent competitors can imitate the
source of your advantage they can produce similar
products at similar costs. However, legal restrictions
(patents, copyrights, trademarks, licenses), superior access
to inputs and customers, tacit knowledge, market size and
scale economies, early mover advantages, history
dependence and culture, leadership, personality and
human capital are weapons that help prevent imitation.
There are a lot of appropriability mechanisms, ways for the
firm to protect its innovation. The main mechanisms used
are not legal ones. In practice it is not a patent that decided
whether a firm is competitive or not. They are important
but for most firms daily life and strategy is what is most
important.
Depending on the type of industry each type of mechanism
for appropriability differs, their importance is relative.
Technologies

often

require

complementary

assets

for

commercialization such as competitive manufacturing,

distribution, service, complementary technologies and
regulatory capabilities. If complementary assets are readily
available, then the owner of the innovation is in the drivers
seat. If other firms hold the checkpoint complementary
assets they will extract a large share of the profits.
Imitators and followers with complementary assets may be
better equipped to profit from innovation.
Complementary assets is everything that is around the core
knowledge, the core technological know-how. But in a lot of
circumstances you need to have access to a lot of other
things in order for being successful.
Most of the time the owner of complementary assets will
try to leverage its position when it comes to the technology
you want to commercialize which means both will want
different things.
Innovators must decide between acquiring complementary
assets and contracting them:

Integrate

of

Contract

38

Complementary assets are specialized

Appropriability regime is weak
Specialized asset is critical
Competitors
have
no
advantage
complementary asset
Financially feasible

Diversifies risk
Reduces cash requirements
Increases incentives
Brings credibility
in

With innovation based on new technological competences,

race between innovator and incumbent is enacted. The
innovator runs to establish complementary assets that hold
its innovative position. The incumbent runs to gain
technological competencies that allow it to compete.

Sometimes the innovators are not the winners and

imitators are the ones who capture the value. Aside from
first mover advantages there are other factors that account
for capturing value and profitability.
What influences the distribution of profits among players is
the market.
Appropriability is the ability to appropriate, to secure
something, to keep it. It refers to how easy it is to protect
an idea, a technology, to secure value for an innovation.
There can be a great idea but zero value being captured
because it is too easy to replicate and there is no way to
protect it.
If someone can copy something from you the first mover
advantage no longer exists.
When something is easy to replicate or imitate then speed
is of critical value because the more you get into the
learning process and start getting things right the bigger
are the odds you succeed.

Class 4 Lexar Media Case

39

40

Class 5
Open Innovation
Companies are increasingly rethinking the fundamental ways in which they generate ideas and
bring them to the market harnessing external ideas while leveraging their in-house R&D
outside their current operations.
In the past, internal R&D was a valuable strategic asset, even a formidable barrier to entry by
competitors in many markets. These days, however, the leading industrial enterprises from the
past have been encountering remarkably strong competition from many upstarts. Newcomers
conduct little or no basic research on their own, but instead get new ideas to the market
through a different process. Companies that compete in the same industry can innovate in
different manners. Instead of internal R&D, they can turn to external sources. Whatever
technology companies need, they can acquire it from outside, usually by partnering or
investing in promising startups. In this way, they can keep up with the R&D output all without
conducting much research of their own.
Why is internal R&D no longer the strategic asset it once was? We can now see a fundamental
shift in how companies generate new ideas and bring them to the market. In the old model of
closed innovation, successful innovation required control and companies had to generate
own new ideas that they would then develop, manufacture, market, distribute and service
themselves. It was a vicious cycle as those that invested more heavily in R&D than their
competitors and hired the best and the brightest were able to discover the best and greatest
number of ideas which would allow them to get to the market first, allowing them to reap the
most profits, which they protected by aggressively controlling their Intellectual Property to
prevent competitor from exploiting it. They would then reinvest the profits in more R&D,
creating a virtuous circle of innovation.
A number of factors contributed to erode the underpinnings of closed innovation:

There was a dramatic rise in the number and mobility of knowledge workers, making
it increasingly difficult for companies to control their proprietary ideas and expertise.
Growing availability of private venture capital, which has helped to finance new firms
and their efforts to commercialize ideas that have spilled outside the silos of
corporate research labs.

If a company that funded a discovery doesnt pursue it in a timely fashion, the people involved
could pursue it on their own in a startup financed by venture capital. The successful startup
would generally not reinvest in new fundamental discoveries, but instead look outside for
another technology to commercialize. In this new model of open innovation, firms
commercialize external (as well as internal) ideas by developing outside (as well as in-house)
pathways to the market. Companies can commercialize internal ideas through channels outside
of their current business in order to generate value for the organization. Some vehicles for
accomplishing this include startup companies and licensing agreements. The boundary
between a firm and its surrounding environment is more porous, enabling innovation to move
easily between the two. Open innovation is based on a landscape of abundant knowledge,
which must be used readily if it is to provide value for the company that created it. However,
an organization should not restrict the knowledge it uncovers in its research to its internal
market pathways. No longer should a company lock up its IP, but instead it should find ways to
profit from others use of that technology through licensing agreements, joint ventures and
other arrangements. A company that is focused too internally can miss a lot of opportunities

41

because many will fall outside the organizations current business or will need to be combined
with external technologies to unlock their potential. Like this, companies can reap tremendous
benefits. Many industries are currently transitioning from closed to open innovation. The locus
of innovation in these industries has migrated beyond the confines on the central R&D
laboratories of the largest companies and is now situated among various startups, universities,
research consortia and other outside organizations. Extending companies R&D to the outside
world by moving their own innovations outside allows any idea that originates in their labs to
be offered to outside firms, preventing promising projects from losing momentum and
becoming stuck inside the organization.
However, not all industries have been or will be migrating to open innovation. This is true for
those that depend mainly on internal ideas and that have low labor mobility, little venture
capital, few and weak startups and relatively little research being conducted at universities.

The Different Modes of Innovation Byexploring ways in which external technologies

can fill gaps in their current businesses and looking at how their internal technologies can
spawn the seeds of new businesses outside the current organization, firms have focused their
activities in one of three primary areas: funding, generating or commercializing
innovation.

Funding Innovation
Two types of organizations innovation investors and benefactors are focused primarily on
supplying fuel for the innovation fire. Innovation investors capital helps move ideas out of
corporations and universities into the market, typically through the creation of startups. They
can also supply valuable advice. Innovation benefactors provide new sources of research
funding, they focus on the early stages of research discovery and by doing this they get a first
look at the ideas and can selectively fund those that seem favorable to their industry.

Generating Innovation
There are four types of organizations that primarily generate innovation: innovation explorers,
merchants, architects and missionaries. Innovation explorers specialize in performing the
discovery research function that previously took place primarily within corporate R&D
laboratories. They innovate for the sake of innovation, seeking new missions for their work and
much of their basic research is finding applications in commercial markets. Innovation
merchants must also explore, but their activities are focused on a narrow set of technologies
that are then codified into IP and aggressively sold to and brought to the market by others.
They will innovate but only with specific commercial goals in mind. Innovation architects create
value for their customers by putting everything together where the DIY approach doesnt work.
They work closely with a lot of companies in complex and fast-moving environments and
provide integrated solutions to their clients while seeking financial profits from their work.
Innovation missionaries consist of people and organizations that create and advance
technologies to serve a cause, the mission is what motivates them.

Commercializing Innovation
Two types of organizations are focused on bringing innovations to the market: innovation
marketers and one-stop centers. Innovation marketers define attributes and this is their keen
ability to profitably market ideas, both their own as well as others. Marketers focus on
developing a deep understanding of the current and potential needs in the market and this
helps them to identify which outside ideas to bring in-house. They interact a lot with their
customers to gain in-depth knowledge about their needs. Innovation one-stop centers provide
comprehensive products and services. They take the best ideas and deliver those offerings to
their customers at competitive prices. They thrive by selling others ideas, but are different in
that they typically from unshakable connections to end-users, increasingly managing a
customers resources to his or her specifications (specially B2B).

42

Some companies do all three. Others are called fully integrated innovators and continue to
espouse the closed innovation credo of Innovation through total control.They need to
manage and coordinate a lot of different internal R&D efforts to stay competitive, for example
products that are 100% produced in-house, where all technology comes from the same
company.
A corporation can deploy different modes of innovation in different markets as competing
modes can exist in the same market. One possible development in the future is the rise of
specialized intermediaries that function as brokers or middlemen to create markets for IP.

The logic that supports an internally oriented, centralized approach to R&D has become
obsolete. Useful knowledge has become widespread and ideas must be used with
readiness. If not, they will be lost. Such factors create a logic of open innovation that
embraces external ideas in conjunction with internal R&D and this change offers novel
ways to create value. However, companies must still perform the difficult and arduous
work necessary to convert promising research results into products and services that
satisfy customers needs. Innovators must integrate their ideas, expertise and skills with
those of others outside the organization to deliver the result to the marketplace. Firms
that can harness outside ideas to advance their own businesses while leveraging their
internal ideas outside their current operations will likely thrive in this new era of open
innovation.

43

Lead User Idea-Generation Process

Traditional idea generation techniques based on customer input usually collect information on
new product needs from a random or typical set of customers. The lead user process collects
information about both needs and solutions from users in other markets that face similar
problems in a more extreme form.
Many firms generate new product ideas based on information collected from current or
potential users. These traditional market research techniques collect information from users at
the center of the target market. The lead user (LU) process involves identifying and learning
from lead users both within the target market and in advanced analog markets that have
similar needs in a more extreme form. This method generate breakthrough new products at a
higher rate. Despite the strategic importance of effective new product development as a source
of competitive advantage, most new product development activities fail to achieve their
anticipated level of market success as most of the products developed tend to be marginal
contributors to the firms portfolio, rarely involving very new or breakthrough ideas.
Traditional marketing research methods obtain information from respondents at the center of
the market respondents whose thinking is limited by their current experience and
environment. There are two major points of difference between methods traditionally used and
the LU idea-generation method: the kind of respondents from whom information is collected
and the type of information that is collected. First, traditional methods obtain data from
representative users or customers at the center or near the center of the intended target
market. Second, they obtain need information only, and assign the task of generating ideas for
solutions leading to new products to manufacturers. In contrast, the LU idea-generation
methods collect information on both needs and ideas for solutions from LU. Lead users are
identified as users of a given product or service type that combine two characteristics:

They expect attractive innovation-related benefits from a solution to their

needs and so are motivated to innovate and they experience needs for a given
innovation earlier than the majority of the target market.

LU have a better ability to generate breakthrough ideas new product ideas that form the basis
of an entire new line of products or services. Traditional methods focus on subjects that are
strongly constrained by their real-world experience. Thus, those who use an object or see it
used in a familiar way are blocked from using that object in a novel way. Representative targetmarket customers, users of todays products, seem to be poorly situated to envision novel
needs or solutions. LU are better situated in this regard, they live in the future, experiencing
today what representative users will experience months or years later. Users rather than
manufacturers, to whom the solution creation is awarded in traditional methods, are often the
initial developers of what later becomes commercially significant new products or processes.
LU ideas are significantly more novel than ideas generated by non LU methods, they address
more original/newer customer needs, have significantly higher market share, have greater
potential to develop into an entire product line are strategically more important. Also, projected
annual sales are higher than those generated by non-LU methods. LU methods do generate
ideas with greater commercial potential. Non-LU methods produce mainly funded ideas for
improvements and extensions to existing product lines. Also, LU methods of identifying and
learning from lead users outside of the target market will increase the overall rate at which the
organization generates major product lines. LU ideas involve as high a level of intellectual
property protection as ideas generated by non-LU methods. However, LU idea-generation
methods cost more in time and money. All in all, the LU idea-generation method does appear to
generate better results than traditional methods.

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(Slides and Summaries Class 5)

o
o
o
o
o

Open innovation combines external and internal R&D into

architecture and systems whose requirements are defined by
business model not firm boundary.
Increases speed of research and innovation, cuts risks and generates new
innovative ideas
Blurs boundaries of firm R&D and commercialization
Inputs can come from internal sources (marketing, strategic planning) and
external ones (customers, market information)
Sources such as inventors, startup companies or university laboratories are
actively sought out
Commercialization can be internal or external at any level

Open

Closed

All smart people In the field work for us

There are smart people inside and outside
To profit from R&D must discover, develop and ship
External R&D can add value alongside internal
We can get to market first if we innovate
We need not originate research to benefit
First company to market will win
Building better business model is more
If we create most and best ideas well win
important than first to market
We must control our IP
We win if we make best use from internal
and external
We can profit from others use f our IP and
benefit from theirs when appropriate

Firms can effectively motivate distributed work and innovation

outside its formal boundaries by combining fun, monetary, and
career incentives.
To hire or not to hire, or rather, to command or to inspire firms
can effectively orchestrate collective work according to cost and
complexity.
Users that actually innovated can play a much more
preeminent role in driving innovation of the firm provides the
right development environment.

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Class 5 InnoCentive.com Case

Why do firms refer problems to IC?

Wider range of people to look at problems

How do we get really good ideas? Increase the likelihood of
getting good ideas when we have a diversity of people and
backgrounds we get greater variance
Lack of expertise (knowledge)
If you have internal limitations than maybe its easier/faster to
outsource the problems as the company might speed up the
process
Add capacity (it extends the ability for you to do something)
Think outside the box, more creative solutions, maybe even
outside the industry the firm is operating in
Protect their identity
Limited risk because they pay for results
Overcome internal hurdles
Switch from problem solving to solution analyzing
No solution found internally (even if they have the right
expertise)
You want the best outcome possible, the best solution. The more
answers you get the bigger the odds are. That increases the
length of the variance. The likelihood of drawing a good solution
is higher
Increase number of solvers
Cheap labor

Nature of the problem?

Outside competence of the firm
Cant solve internally
Describable
Codifiable
Evaluate the solution
Valuable to firm
Limited solver resources needed

Retain solution
Independent
Modular
No need to disclose valuable key
strategic knowledge
Time sensitive
Problems
that
leverage
complementary assets

You really need to manage your R&D staff in a sensitive way in order to augment the capacities
you will gain from external sources but also to limit the downsizes.
Value of IC in particular?

Lots of expertise in creating problems/challenges

Lots of expertise in evaluation
Custom service
A lot of very talented people network externalities as if there
are more solvers there will be more companies. There is a two
sided platform effect as the network externalities are same-sided
and cross-sided as well
Security of the environment when it comes to IP
Good participation ratio (not only a lot of users but also active)
Great hit rate

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Why do solvers participate in IC?

Challenge themselves
Money
Gratification to contribute
Part-time job/freelance
Range of opportunities to contribute
Reputation/recognition
Self-esteem
Professional reasons
Fun

Is collaboration a good or bad idea?

Good

Bad

Combine knowledge
Increase the chance of getting to a solution
New knowledge from teams
Get at least a piece of the cake
Social value

Demotivates you to compete against a team

Anchoring after an idea has been presented
it is more difficult to think freely
Coordination issues
Decrease reputation value
Legal issues
Lower autonomy

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Class 6
Customer Power, Strategic Investment, and the failure of Leading
Firms
It is hard for firms to repeat their success when technology or markets change. The failure of
leading firms can sometimes be ascribed to managerial myopia or organizational lethargy, or to
insufficient resources or expertise. Why and under what circumstances do financially strong,
consumer-sensitive, technologically deep and rationally managed organizations fail to adopt
critical new technologies or enter important markets? Failure to innovate may lead to the
decline of once-great firms. A primary reason why such firms lose their positions of industry
leadership when faced with certain types of technological change has little to do with
technology itself. Rather, they fail because they listen too carefully to their customers and
customers place limits on the strategies firms can and cannot pursue. Patterns of resource
allocation heavily influence the types of innovation at which leading firms will succeed or fail. In
every organization, ideas emerge daily about new ways of doing things. Most proposals to
innovate require human and financial resources. The patterns of innovation evidenced in a
company will therefore mirror to a considerable degree the patterns in how resources are
allocated to, and withheld from, competing proposals to innovate. Because effective resource
allocation is market-driven, the resource allocation procedures in successful organizations
provide impetus for innovations known to be demanded by current customers in existing
markets. Firms possessing the capacity and capability to innovate may fail when the innovation
does not address the foreseeable needs of their current customers. When the initial
price/performance characteristics of emerging technologies render them competitive only in
emerging market segments, and not with current customers, resource allocation mechanisms
typically deny resources to such technologies. The inability of some successful firms to allocate
sufficient resources to technologies that initially cannot find application in mainstream markets,
but later invade them, lies at the root if the failure of many once-successful firms.
Why do firms that lead may fail when faced with technology change? New technologies often
are initially deployed in new markets, and these are usually brought into the industry by
entering firms. Established firms confront new technology often by intensifying their
commitment to conventional technology, while starving efforts to commercialize the new one,
even while it is gaining ground market.
Incumbent firms may stumble when technological change destroys the value of established
technological competences or when new architectural technologies emerge. We need to make
a distinction between the innovations that sustain the industrys rate of improvement in
product performance and those innovations that disrupt or redefine that performance
trajectory.
Sustaining technological changes have an impact on an established trajectory of
performance improvement and they address the improvements that the companys
current customers expect. On the other hand, disruptive technologies disrupt an
established trajectory of performance improvement, or redefine what performance
means. The new architectures do not address the perceived need of current customers
but they do possess attributes that appeal to emerging market segments. In general,
sustaining technological changes appeal to established customers in existing
mainstream markets. They provide existing customers with more of what they expect. In
contrast, disruptive technologies rarely can initially be employed in established markets.
They tend instead to be valued in remote or emerging markets.

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Leading firms might successfully pioneer in the development and adoption of many new and
difficult technologies, and yet they lose their positions of industry leadership by failing to
implement others. In spite of the wide variety in the magnitudes and types of sustaining
technological changes in the industry, the firms that lead in their development and adoption
are the industrys leading, established firms. The established firms lead in the adoption of
sustaining technology, entrant firms follow. In contrast, the firms that lead the industry in
introducing disruptive innovation tend to be entrant.
The ability of established firms to lead the industry in the sustaining innovations that power
steep technological trajectories are technologically difficult, risky and expensive but there is no
evidence that this makes them gain market share. This leadership enables them to maintain
their competitiveness only within specific technological trajectories. On the other hand,
entrant firms leadership in disruptive innovations enable them not only to capture
new markets as they emerged but, because the trajectories of technological
progress are steeper than the trajectories of performance demanded, to invade and
capture established markets as well.
Why is it that firms which at one point could be esteemed as aggressive, innovative, customersensitive organizations could ignore or attend belatedly to technological innovations with
enormous strategic importance? When confronted with disruptive technological change,
developing the technology per se is not the problem. It is in the process of allocating scarce
resources that disruptive projects get stalled. Programs addressing the needs of the firms most
powerful customers almost always consume the resources from the disruptive technologies,
whose markets tend to be small and where customers needs are poorly defined.
Although entrants are the leaders in commercializing the disruptive technology, the first
engineers to develop it usually are from the leading firms and use bootlegged resources.
While architectural innovative, these designs almost always employ off-the-shelf
components. Prototypes are made and showed to lead customers of the existing product
line so that they can evaluate the new models. But they show little interest in the
disruptive technologies because they do not address their current needs for higher
performance within the established architectural framework. As a consequence,
marketing managers are unwilling to support the disruptive technology and offer
pessimistic sales. Also, because the disruptive technology is targeted at emerging
markets and lower performance is lower, initial forecasts of sales and margins are low,
which makes financial analysts against the disruptive technology as well. In response to
the needs of current customers, the marketing managers throw impetus behind
alternative sustaining projects. These give their customers what they want, can be
targeted at large markets and generate sales and profits required to maintain growth.
Although they generally involver greater development expense, such sustaining
investments appear less risky than investments in the disruptive technology,
because the customers are there. Established firms are more concerned with
competitive wars against each other, rather than to prepare for an attack from entrants
below. New companies were formed to exploit the disruptive product architecture. The
start-ups find new customers and start selling their products without a clear marketing
strategy. Once they find an operating base in new markets, they start adopting
sustaining improvements in the new technology and the performance improvement
evolves at a faster rate than the one requires by their new markets, which allows them
to move into new upscale ones. Customers in these established markets eventually
embrace the new technology they rejected earlier because now their performance
requirements are met. Once this starts to happen, leading firms start to enter the
market with this new technology as well, but at this point the entrants are already fully
performance competitive as they develop advantages in costs and design experience.

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The new products (with new technology) cannibalize the sales of the older in such a way
that many times former leading firms are forced to leave the market because they
cannot keep up.
Many of the sustaining innovations are extremely expensive and risky form a technological
point of view. Yet, because they addressed well-understood needs of known customers,
perceived market risk was low. Although these sustaining innovations clearly helped the
innovators retain their customers, there is no evidence from the industrys history that any firm
was able to gain market share by virtue of such technology leadership. On the other hand,
disruptive innovations are technologically straightforward: several established firms had
already developed them by the time formal resource allocation decisions were made. But these
were viewed as extremely risky because they could not see the markets for it.
Engineers in established firms that developed disruptive-architecture products were innovative
not just in technology, but in their view of the market as they intuitively perceived
opportunities. But organizational processes allocate resources based on rational assessments
of data about returns and risks. Information provided by innovating engineers was hypothetical
at best: without existing customers, they could only guess the size of the market, the
profitability of products, and required product performance. In contrast, current customers
could articulate features, performance and quantities they would purchase with much less
ambiguity. The popular slogan stay close to your customer may not always be robust advice.
Neglect of disruptive technologies prove damaging to established firms because the trajectory
of performance improvement that the technology provided was steeper than the improvement
trajectory demanded in individual markets. The mismatch in these trajectories provide
pathways for the firms that enter new markets eventually to become performance competitive
in established markets as well. If the trajectories were parallel we would expect disruptive
technologies to be deployed in new markets and stay there; each successive market would
constitute a relatively stable niche market out of which technologies and firms would not
migrate.
A firms scope for strategic change is strongly bounded by the interests of external entities
such as customers and shareholders that provide the resources the firm needs to survive. So
we usually see this resources used to sustaining innovation that addresses current customers
needs. But managers can, in fact, change the strategic course of their firms in directions other
than those in which its resource providers are pulling it. Managers can align efforts to
commercialize disruptive technology which entails a change in strategy with the forces of
resource dependence. Shortly, the reason why strong, capably managed firms stumble when
face with particular types of technological change, is an issue of investment.
When technological competence exists but impetus from customers lacks, firms are unable to
commercialize what they already can do. This is because disruptive technologies initially tend
to be saleable in different markets whose economic and financial characteristics render them
unattractive to established firms. In the end, it appears that although the stumbles of these
established firms are associated with technological change, the key issue appears to be firms
disabilities in changing strategy, not technology.

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(Slides and Summaries Class 6)

o
o
o
o
o

Innovation can be defined in many dimensions: product

innovation, process innovation and business model innovation.
Radical innovation establishes a new dominant design and alters
the fundamental technology of the products components. It can
unseat an incumbent by rendering its competitive advantages
and capabilities moot.
Incremental innovation refines or improves either the product, its
components or the process of producing it. It tends to reinforce
the capabilities of the dominant incumbent.
Sustaining innovation maintains a trajectory of performance
improvement established in a market. It gives customers more
and better attributes that they already value and have come to
expect.
Disruptive innovation introduces different packages of attributes
to a market than the ones currently valued by the mainstream
customers.
Characteristics of disruptive innovation:
Technologically simple
Starts at low price
Minimizes infrastructure and regulatory barriers
Success not predicted on existing customers behavioral change
Enables larger population of non-specialists to do/have something that
historically only specialists/high end could do/have
Should I push or stretch the technology, until I can use it in
existing market segments and applications, with existing
customers?
Should I find or create a new market segment in which the
attributes of the disruptive technology as it exists today are
valued?
Steps to deal with disruptions:
1. Determine if technology is sustaining or disruptive
2. Define strategic relevance of disruptive technology
3. Locate initial market for disruptive technology
4. Place responsibility for building disruptive technology in an independent
organization
5. Keep disruptive organization independent

When disruptive innovation comes in the market it has a very

different set of bundles and its far away from the mainstream
technology and segments that are being served currently.
When disruption technologies enter the market they are not seen
as a threat but at some point their evolution trajectory becomes
so fast and so steep beyond what others predict that they start
to steal business from other technologies that are already
installed in the market. It is very hard for firms to deal with
disruptive innovation.
The new bundle is totally different from the old one.
Let it flow independently to see if it really has the potential to
take off by itself. It should have an independent viable path

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rather than keeping it and managing it in the traditional way of

the firm, so there needs to be a different strategy.

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