In my earlier post, “Breakthrough Technology Markets are Made Not Found,” I made the case that emerging technology markets do not occur on their own but are instead created. This flies in the face of the many technically inclined people who believe that, in open markets, the best idea and the best technology wins. I strongly believe that marketing and awareness, distribution, price, and standardization are each more important to a breakthrough technology’s success than are the merits of the technology itself. The following examples act as my proof points:
>Tokenring and Ethernet networking (1980s). Tokenring is a more predictable and elegant network architecture but Ethernet is simpler and is…well…good enough.
>Pure Digital’s Flip Camera and mobile phone cameras (2005-2010). The Flip Camera is a great, single purpose, pocket size camera. It still works better than most mobile phone video recorders. But Flip Cameras were trumped by a universally available, integrated, portable, multi-purpose device.
Even Apple, arguably the world's preeminent brand, has been unable to radically increase the adoption rate for Macs. Price, availability, software and accessory choice, massive distribution, and enterprise standardization have made it so that technically inferior Windows PCs outsell the Apple Mac by a ratio of twenty to one.
In my next post, I will explore the topic of how a startup with a breakthrough technology can go about establishing a leadership position within that technology category.
