
Competing in forgotten markets (2012) - kawera
https://www.cooper.com/journal/2012/7/competing-in-forgotten-markets
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meredydd
This article would be greatly improved by some case studies, illustrating how
prevous 800lb gorillas had been beaten, and how their moats turned out so much
shallower than they seemed.

The closest he comes to examples are Microsoft Office (admittedly, few
competitors, but a _massive_ moat, and when he wrote in 2012 already
mobilising in the face of a big challenge from Google), Flickr (already being
killed by the social networking startups he disparages), or Salesforce
(competing CRM products are _everywhere_ ).

I'd love to have my mind changed with fleshed-out examples, but without them
this reads like a banal expression of the conventional wisdom of the time
(incumbents are vulnerable! Disrupt disrupt disrupt!).

Perhaps that's particularly obvious because the conventional wisdom has
shifted. Today, the big 5 tech companies are deeply entrenched, and we've
watched them each see off a couple of generations of upstarts, while remaining
awake and engaged in fierce competition with each other. So an argument like
this needs a bit more evidence to be convincing.

~~~
NPMaxwell
There is Tableau displacing the graphics capabilities of Excel.

~~~
paulddraper
Those are hardly competitors.

Like comparing Microsoft Word and Adobe InDesign.

~~~
NPMaxwell
I must have misunderstood the OP. I thought it was about launching things like
InDesign to displace established market dominators like Word by providing a
better tool.

