PRUEBAS

CHAPTER SIXMatch the Size of theOrganization to the Sizeof the MarketManagers who confront disruptive technological change must be leaders, not followers, incommercializing disruptive technologies. Doing so requires implanting the projects that are to developsuch technologies in commercial organizations that match in size the market they are to address. Theseassertions are based on two key findings of this study: that leadership is more crucial in coping withdisruptive technologies than with sustaining ones, and that small, emerging markets cannot solve thenear-term growth and profit requirements of large companies.The evidence from the disk drive industry shows that creating new markets is significantly less riskyand more rewarding than entering established markets against entrenched competition. But ascompanies become larger and more successful, it becomes even more difficult to enter emergingmarkets early enough. Because growing companies need to add increasingly large chunks of newrevenue each year just to maintain their desired rate of growth, it becomes less and less possible thatsmall markets can be viable as vehicles through which to find these chunks of revenue. As we shall see,the most straightforward way of confronting this difficulty is to implant projects aimed atcommercializing disruptive technologies in organizations small enough to get excited about smallmarketopportunities, and to do so on a regular basis even while the mainstream company is growing.ARE THE PIONEERS REALLY THE ONES WITH ARROWS IN THEIR BACKS?A crucial strategic decision in the management of innovation is whether it is important to be a leader oracceptable to be a follower. Volumes have been written on first-mover advantages, and an offsettingamount on the wisdom of waiting until the innovation’s major risks have been resolved by thepioneering firms. “You can always tell who the pioneers were,” an old management adage goes.“They’re the ones with the arrows in their backs.” As with most disagreements in management theory,neither position is always right. Indeed, some findings from the study of the disk drive industry givesome insight into when leadership is critical and when followership makes better sense.Leadership in Sustaining Technologies May Not Be EssentialOne of the watershed technologies affecting the pace at which disk drive makers have increased therecording density of their drives was the thin-film read/write head. We saw in chapter 1 that despite theradically different, competence-destroying character of the technology, the $100 million and five-to-102