The_Innovators_Dilemma__Clayton

What benefit, if any, did leadership in this technology give to the pioneers? There is no evidence that
the leaders gained any significant competitive advantage over the followers; none of the firms that
pioneered thin-film technology gained significant market share on that account. In addition, pioneering
firms appear not to have developed any sort of learning advantage enabling them to leverage their early
lead to attain higher levels of density than did followers. Evidence of this is displayed in Figure 6.2.
The horizontal axis shows the order in which the firms adopted thin-film heads. Hence, IBM was the
first, Memorex, the second, and Fujitsu the fifteenth. The vertical axis gives the rank ordering of the
recording density of the most advanced model marketed by each firm in 1989. If the early adopters of
thin-film heads enjoyed some sort of experience-based advantage over the late adopters, then we would
expect the points in the chart to slope generally from the upper left toward the lower right. The chart
shows instead that there is no relationship between leadership and followership in thin-film heads and
any subsequent technological edge. 1
Each of the other sustaining technologies in the industry’s history present a similar picture. There is no
evidence that any of the leaders in developing and adopting sustaining technologies developed a
discernible competitive advantage over the followers. 2
Leadership in Disruptive Technologies Creates Enormous Value
In contrast to the evidence that leadership in sustaining technologies has historically conferred little
advantage on the pioneering disk drive firms, there is strong evidence that leadership in disruptive
technology has been very important. The companies that entered the new value networks enabled by
disruptive generations of disk drives within the first two years after those drives appeared were six
times more likely to succeed than those that entered later.
Eighty-three companies entered the U.S. disk drive industry between 1976 and 1993. Thirty-five of
these were diversified concerns, such as Memorex, Ampex, 3M, and Xerox, that made other computer
peripheral equipment or other magnetic recording products. Forty-eight were independent startup
companies, many being financed by venture capital and headed by people who previously had worked
for other firms in the industry. These numbers represent the complete census of all firms that ever were
incorporated and/or were known to have announced the design of a hard drive, whether or not they
actually sold any. It is not a statistical sample of firms that might be biased in favor or against any type
of firm.
Figure 6.2 Relationship between Order of Adoption of Thin-Film Technology and Areal Density of
Highest-Performance 1989 Model
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