Comments on: Is there an inverse to the Innovator’s Dilemma? http://dubinko.info/blog/2008/04/27/is-there-an-inverse-to-the-innovators-dilemma/ From an XML geek, a reader, a writer, a connector, a man of the people (says keep hope alive) Sat, 01 Oct 2011 16:18:55 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Mike Champion http://dubinko.info/blog/2008/04/27/is-there-an-inverse-to-the-innovators-dilemma/comment-page-1/#comment-3964 Mike Champion Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:45:32 +0000 http://dubinko.info/blog/?p=190#comment-3964 The essence of the dilemma is "do I focus on additional features that my current customers will pay for or on making it simpler/cheaper so that I can find lots more new customers?" Or to put it another way, do I compete for existing consumers or go after the non-consumers?" There's no Law of Nature saying that minimalist products will disrupt complex ones, so the answer to the Dilemma depends on the specific technology and market. For example, as a Microsoft stakeholder I'm not terribly worried about the various alternatives to Office disrupting it in the Christensen sense -- there are no non-consumers of wordprocessors and spreadsheet programs out there. There might be people who value a simpler UI, smoother integration over the Web, etc. but those are features to compete on (that take a lot of work to get right), not low-end disruptors such as PCs/Wordperfect was to Wang dedicated wordprocessors back in the '80s. "Steadfastly simple" technology only works for niches. For example, command line shells are still beloved by *ix geeks, but nobody else AFAIK. Windows isn't losing mindshare/marketshare to simple/cheap/standardized Linux, it's losing it to glitzy/somewhat pricey/proprietary Apple stuff. Is that a refutation of Christensen? I don't think so; there just isn't a large group of people locked out of the current feature/price/complexity point, so "competing against non-consumption" isn't a viable option. "Steadfastly simple" *interfaces are another matter. The iPhone is a clear example of how something that is steadfastly simple to *use* can disrupt a market. It has no features that haven't been available on high-end Windows Mobile or Nokia smartphones for awhile, but it makes those features so much more accessible to a mainstream user that it got massive acceptance. That *was* competing against non-consumption, appealing to people who didn't have smartphones and those who did but were put off by their complexity. The iPhone is obviously not a steadfastly simple piece of technology, however. The essence of the dilemma is “do I focus on additional features that my current customers will pay for or on making it simpler/cheaper so that I can find lots more new customers?” Or to put it another way, do I compete for existing consumers or go after the non-consumers?”

There’s no Law of Nature saying that minimalist products will disrupt complex ones, so the answer to the Dilemma depends on the specific technology and market. For example, as a Microsoft stakeholder I’m not terribly worried about the various alternatives to Office disrupting it in the Christensen sense — there are no non-consumers of wordprocessors and spreadsheet programs out there. There might be people who value a simpler UI, smoother integration over the Web, etc. but those are features to compete on (that take a lot of work to get right), not low-end disruptors such as PCs/Wordperfect was to Wang dedicated wordprocessors back in the ’80s.

“Steadfastly simple” technology only works for niches. For example, command line shells are still beloved by *ix geeks, but nobody else AFAIK. Windows isn’t losing mindshare/marketshare to simple/cheap/standardized Linux, it’s losing it to glitzy/somewhat pricey/proprietary Apple stuff. Is that a refutation of Christensen? I don’t think so; there just isn’t a large group of people locked out of the current feature/price/complexity point, so “competing against non-consumption” isn’t a viable option.

“Steadfastly simple” *interfaces are another matter. The iPhone is a clear example of how something that is steadfastly simple to *use* can disrupt a market. It has no features that haven’t been available on high-end Windows Mobile or Nokia smartphones for awhile, but it makes those features so much more accessible to a mainstream user that it got massive acceptance. That *was* competing against non-consumption, appealing to people who didn’t have smartphones and those who did but were put off by their complexity. The iPhone is obviously not a steadfastly simple piece of technology, however.

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