Tech Industry Transition Commentary Lacks Specific Leads

Creativity 307 Fae Vg v0 L (Be) ely PS ie eB aha pe ia | RA a1 Hard Drives hard drive manufacturer would be the obvious group to construct the next generation. But it seemed that not only did incumbent players not construct the next generation, they ran their businesses into the ground while ignoring the technology discontinuity. Despite their legions of Ivy League graduates and business school MBAs, they all went bankrupt. As he looked around the economy, he found a similar pattern in other sectors. Minicomputer companies failed to make the jump to personal computers. Further back in time, buggy whip companies — in the Fortune 100 at the turn of the 20" century — failed to make the transition to the motor vehicle economy. The only exception he could find was IBM. IBM had successfully navigated some transitions but at that time was fighting for survival as companies transitioned from mainframes to Linux based servers and their survival was in question. Why was this so? Christensen’s conclusion is that established companies tend to concentrate too much on their existing revenue streams while ignoring potential new ones. This is no surprise. When the disc drive industry made the move from 8” disks to 54”, the only customers for these new new smaller models were unheard of manufacturers of personal computers. Some were based in the dorms of MIT and Harvard — Dell and Compaq -— not in the existing powerhouses of computing — Digital HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015997