Bringing Tech to Market: The Rules of Innovation

Everyone knows that best-quality plus first-to-market doesn't always equal success. A Harvard prof who specializes in this stuff has a great article in Technology Review that digs a lot deeper, called The Rules of Innovation. It's a look at why some technologies are marketplace success stories and some are forgotten failures -- and more, an attempt at rules which predict which will be which. There are lessons here for the entrenched companies (e.g. Sony) as well as for the disruptive upstarts (e.g. Sony 50 years ago). You have to understand the battlefield to win the war.

Comments

This shallow analysis is as wrong as it is right.

[Anonymous Coward]

It makes some obvious points, and others that are dead wrong.

The "integration" description attempts to acribe attributes of integration to Microsoft that were far more true of the competitors who lost and were buried due to marketing muscle. WordPerfect, PlanPerfect, WordPerfect Library, WordPerfect Office (email, scheduler, calendar, etc.), etc. were much better integrated early on, but that wasn't a very important facor in competing.
Gee, look Microsoft won. Their products are integrated, and the only ones we know enough about to talk intelligently. Let's compare them to the few scraps of the competitors that are still being hawked by their third-hand owner on the market today.

"Harvard prof who specializes in this stuff "

[CathedralRulz]

Please. If he specialized in it he would be doing it. I have no interest in listening to what some academic is pontificating about from his ivory tower about how us groundlings can do stuff better.

EG: "those who can, do. those who can't, teach."