The_Innovators_Dilemma__Clayton

Source: Brochure from Sherman Products, Inc., Royal Oak, Michigan, early 1950s.
The solid line in Figure 3.3 charts the rate of improvement in bucket size that hydraulics engineers
were able to provide in the new excavator architecture. The maximum available bucket size had
reached 3/8 cubic yard by 1955, 1/2 cubic yard by 1960, and 2 cubic yards by 1965. By 1974, the
largest hydraulic excavators had the muscle to lift 10 cubic yards. This trajectory of improvement,
which was far more rapid than the rate of improvement demanded in any of the excavator markets,
carried this disruptive hydraulics technology upward from its original market through the large,
mainstream excavation markets. The use of hydraulic excavators in general contracting markets was
given a boost in 1954 when another entrant firm in Germany, Demag, introduced a track-mounted
model that could rotate on its base a full 360 degrees.
THE RESPONSE TO HYDRAULICS BY THE ESTABLISHED EXCAVATOR
MANUFACTURERS
Just as Seagate Technology was one of the first firms to develop prototype 3.5-inch drives, Bucyrus
Erie, the leading cable shovel maker, was keenly aware of the emergence of hydraulic excavating
technology. By 1950 (about two years after the first backhoe appeared) Bucyrus purchased a fledgling
hydraulic backhoe company, the Milwaukee Hydraulics Corporation. Bucyrus faced precisely the same
problem in marketing its hydraulic backhoe as Seagate had faced with its 3.5-inch drives: Its most
powerful mainstream customers had no use for it.
Bucyrus Erie’s response was a new product, introduced in 1951, called the “Hydrohoe.” Instead of
using three hydraulic cylinders, it used only two, one to curl the shovel into the earth and one to
“crowd” or draw the shovel toward the cab; it used a cable mechanism to lift the shovel. The Hydrohoe
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