February 19, 2010


Dear Technology Geeks and Start-up Gurus,

Hope you got some pleasure out of the recently concluded Valentine's Day from your valentine and also from our associated podcast on Dominant Designs and Technology Cycles. In this edition of the portal, we are going to get a little deeper into what happens when a new technology (Linux) disrupts an existing technology (Solaris)...

Disruptive Innovations and Technology Invasions

The tech strategy model below depicts a disruptive technology which begins its trajectory of technology invasion at point D. I have placed two baseline frameworks, with which you all must be familiar, if you have used this Open Strategy Portal before: S-Curves and the Ansoff Matrix. In particular, I have placed points A, C, and D from the model with the corresponding points on the familiar S-Curves framework: 

When the invasive technology has a gap in terms of performance output from the technology and what is demanded by the existing market (at time T1), the businesses selling the existing technology see no threat from the invasion. But what if the invasive technology is able to become a successful business by courting lead users and creating a new niche market, and make it to point B, where it is able to meet the existing market demand (at time T2)? Typically, it starts taking market share from the older stagnating / mature technology because of its better price / performance metrics... To learn more about this technology strategy model and its applications to current technologies / products (iPad, Google Buzz), listen to the associated podcast...

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Do you dream of being the next Google / Yahoo / Microsoft? The next Cisco / Apple / IBM / HP? The next Amgen / Merck / Genentech? Beyond courting the lead users, how will you create a niche market for your invasive technology? Do you realize that to be truly invasive, along with disrupting existing technologies, you do have to create new / niche markets for your products / solutions / platforms based on technology disruption? From where will you gather resources to sustain your start-up from T1 to T2? From T2 to T3? As you go from point D to point B, will the existing market for your high-tech / biotech / clean-tech products / services / platforms be the same, or is that also a moving target? There are no clear cut answers to these questions, but the more such questions you can think of, the more robust will be your business plan and your business model, and the better will be your chances of success when you do create that next high-powered start-up which will be the envy of the world...


Wishing you Godspeed on all your Technology Invasions,
Sam Mishra
Author, Strategic Case Analysis



PS: We now have a plethora of concepts, frameworks, and formulae in the form of podcasts which you can enjoy right away. As the economy grudgingly recovers, the focus on this edition of the portal continues to be on Technology Strategy. So, enjoy the following tech strategy related podcasts ---

S-Curves : How Sam Mishra had used these to alert Sun Microsystem's CEO Scott McNealy (way back in 2002) that Linux was going to kill Solaris (Sun is no more an independent company; today it is an Oracle Business Unit)

Value Chain Analysis: How to Create, Deliver, and Capture Value from Software Manufacturing

TALC: TALC or Technology Adoption Life Cycle, including the "CHASM" between "early adopters" and "early majority"

Dominant Designs and Technology Cycles