If you want to know when top in their class companies lose
their market leadership even by doing everything considered as “right” you
should not wait to master “The Innovator’s Dilemma” by C. M. Christensen. Case studies
from deriving from steel processing, engineering and IT industries rigidly analyzed
by Christensen show how “missing on new waves of innovation” being introduced
to the market may look like. Read it for being creator of these new waves of innovations of course.
To see the bigger picture of how disruptive innovations
change the market status quo“Crossing the Chasm” by G.A. Moore will help. It was
Moore, who segmented inventions targeted groups into five categories of:
innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. Understanding
each of the group will let you position and launch invention you work on much
better and get it more “traction”.
Having spoken with dozens of investors, what counts in successful
introduction invention to the market is their ability of getting “traction”, which is gaining, maintaining and indicating potential to growth of users of the
invention. This is why innovators and early adopters should become your best friends
in iterating, testing and improving core the concept you work on. They'll be your first enthusiasts and concept advocates. You will
find them not only in couple othousands of start-ups dedicated LinkedIn groups,
but also at crowdfunding platforms we wrote some time ago. If you seriously would like to change rules of the game,
consider “think big, but start small” principle. In other words do
a small pilot, prototype or demonstration and prove that you can gain and maintain
users of what you work on. Then pitch an investor, or a company,
which your invention will pose a potential threat.Being asked “What’s your traction?”, know how
to answer it.
Someone wise once said that the real definition of innovation is
successful commercialization of an invention ;-)
