

Why Sony did not invent the iPod (excerpt in comments) - bfe
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/7558a99e-f5ed-11e1-a6c2-00144feabdc0.html

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bfe
Excerpt:

"...Established companies in an industry are naturally resistant to disruptive
innovation, which threatens their existing capabilities and cannibalises their
existing products. A collection of all the businesses which might be
transformed by disruptive innovation might at first sight appear to be a means
of assembling the capabilities needed to manage change. In practice, it is a
means of gathering together everyone who has an incentive to resist change.

"The executives of music companies, film studios and book publishers did not
rush to embrace the opportunities offered by new channels of distribution.
They saw these technological developments as threats to well established
business models in which they had large personal and corporate investments.
And they were right to think this. So convergence was accomplished by groups
such as Apple and Amazon, which had no similar vested interests to oppose
change, These companies succeeded precisely because they were outsiders.

"Economic growth is held back by industries where established interests are so
powerful that disruptive innovation can be staved off for ever. Financial
services is probably one. And education another. I think often of the contrast
between the power of information technology to transform the process of
learning, and the little progress that has been made towards actually doing
so."

