The Myths of Innovation

The innovator's dilemma explained

Earlier, I asked you to imagine inventing the telephone. Did you like that? Well, you'll like this even more, as this scenario has a surprise ending.

Imagine it's 1851, and you're sick and tired of waiting for the Pony Express to deliver important messages. You happen to meet a Mr. Morse and buy into his idea for using copper wire to send instant messages over great distances. Your friends laugh, telling you to get a real job—wires are silly things for grown men to play with. At great financial risk, you build the first cross-country cables in the U.S., and it works, changing the world. Your organization thrives for years; the nation is communicating, for a price, over your cutting-edge digital communication network. Wealthy and famous, attractive people soon throw themselves and their money at you. But you're not finished: in a fit of innovation, you create the first stock ticker in 1866, give the nation its first standardized time service, and revolutionize the financial world with money transfers—allowing people to send cash thousands of miles across the country in seconds.

In the middle of your glory, as your rise to innovation fame reaches untold heights, a young man visits you. He holds an odd machine in his hands. He claims it will replace everything, especially all the things you've struggled all your life to build. He's young, arrogant, and dismissive of your achievements. How long would you listen before you threw a telegraph at him? Could ...