The_Innovators_Dilemma__Clayton

its archives, and Toth and Haddock were most gracious in sharing their knowledge and information
with me. I am also indebted to them for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. Other
useful sources of information are Peter Grimshaw, Excavators (Poole, England: Blandford Press,
1985); The Olyslager Organisation, Inc., Earthmoving Vehicles (London: Frederick Warne & Co., Ltd.,
1972); Harold F. Williamson and Kenneth H. Myers, Designed for Digging: The First 75 Years of
Bucyrus Erie Company (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1955); and J. L. Allhands, Tools
of the Earthmover (Huntsville, TX: Sam Houston College Press, 1951).
3. Interestingly, the high success rate was only amongst the industry’s twenty-five largest firms. Only
one of the seven smallest steam shovel manufacturers survived this sustaining technology change to
internal gasoline combustion. Almost no information is available about these companies other than
what is provided by their product brochures. I suspect, however, that the fact that the large and midsized
firms cruised through this transition while the small ones were killed indicates that resources
played a part in the story, a conclusion that complements the theoretical perspectives summarized in
chapter 2 above. Some sustaining technologies clearly are so expensive to develop and implement or so
dependent on proprietary or scarce expertise that some companies simply cannot successfully manage
the transition. I am indebted to Professor Richard Rosenbloom for sharing his perspective on this issue.
4. An example of this is the development of the first dragline, by Page, a Chicago area contractor. Page
dug Chicago’s system of canals, and invented the dragline in 1903 to do that job more effectively. Page
draglines were later used extensively in digging the Panama Canal, alongside steam shovels made by
Bucyrus Erie and Marion. This finding that customers were significant sources of sustaining
innovations is consistent with Professor Eric von Hippel’s findings; see The Sources of Innovation
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).
5. The companies that survived the invasion of hydraulics in this way found safe haven in a particular
high-end market. Bucyrus Erie and Marion, for example, became the dominant makers of the huge
stripping shovels used in strip mines. Marion’s model 6360 stripping shovel was the largest frontwardscooping
shovel ever built, able to heft 180 cubic yards in its bucket. (An advertisement showing Paul
Bunyan standing aside the 6360 is one of the most stunning pieces of advertising art I have seen.)
Harnischfeger is the world’s largest maker of electric mining shovels, while Unit found a niche making
the huge pedestal cranes used on offshore oil rigs. For a time, Northwest survived by making draglines
for dredging ocean shipping lanes. P & H and Lorain made huge cranes and draglines (all cableactuated).
6. As the hydraulic excavator has matured, these companies have met with varying degrees of
subsequent success. In 1996, the world’s highest-volume excavator companies, Demag and O & K,
were based in Germany.
7. Technically, excavators that scoop their buckets forward are power shovels. This was the dominant
design from 1837 through the early 1900s, and persisted as a major market segment through much of
this century. Excavators that pull earth backward toward the cab are backhoes. As the hydraulic
excavator became the dominant design during the 1970s, both types came to be called excavators. Until
hydraulic actuation required the booms to be permanently attached to the unit, contractors could attach
different booms or arms to their basic power units so that the same unit could work as a shovel,
backhoe, or crane. Similarly, different buckets, sometimes called dippers, could be attached to move
different types of material.
8. The true measure of performance in excavation was the number of cubic yards of earth that could be
moved per minute. This measure was so dependent upon operator skill and upon the type of earth being
dug, however, that contractors adopted bucket size as the more robust, verifiable metric. 9. These
British and American pioneers were followed by several European manufacturers, each of which was
also an entrant to the excavator industry, including France’s Poclain and Italy’s Bruneri Brothers.
10. The ability to push the shovel into the earth was a major advantage to the hydraulics approach. The
cable-actuated excavators that pulled earth toward the operator all had to rely on gravity to drive the
teeth of the heavy shovel into the earth.
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