The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail

Part Two

MANAGING DISRUPTIVE         TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE

In the search for reasons why so many strong companies in three very different industries stumbled or failed, the research summarized in the preceding chapters casts doubt on several conventional explanations other researchers have offered. It wasn’t the case that the leading companies’ engineers tended to get stuck in a particular technological paradigm or ignored innovations that were “not invented here.” The cause of failure could not be solely attributed to established firms’ inadequate competence in new technological fields or their inability to stay atop their industry’s “technological mudslide.” Of course, these problems do afflict some companies. But as a general ...