What the Financial Statements Don’t Tell You
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designed for small businesses and home offi ces,
Xerox didn’t pay much attention. As Harvard
Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen
points out in his work on disruptive innovation,
that made perfect sense—Xerox’s customers
weren’t interested in cheap, underperforming ma-
chines. But Canon got a toehold in the market, and
it was soon able to improve its machines, move
up-market, and challenge Xerox head-on.
• Missing the next big thing. Nokia, once the leader
among cell phone manufacturers, found itself
upstaged and outcompeted by Apple’s iPhone and
other smart phones. Although it had introduced
a smart phone of its own, it missed the appeal of
touch-screen technology. So rapid was the ...