Stay attuned to change and anticipate ″tipping points,″ or you will miss the market.
Missed the bandwagon?
Technology companies compete in a market where change can happen breathtakingly fast and where the rate of change is constantly shifting. Because of these overall market dynamics, changes in acceleration related to the adoption of a product or service or the emergence of a market trend can create greater difficulty for technology companies than for companies in other industries where there is more time to react.
As a result, technology companies have learned to perform extensive due diligence to understand the strategic timing of market entry for specific products and services.
This means staying attuned to and anticipating changing market variables, including the emergence of new, potentially disruptive technologies, legislative developments, variations in patterns of consumer demand and actions of existing players and new entrants.
It is significantly easier to anticipate legislative developments that generally occur in public view than it is to predict the rise of a disruptive technology, changing consumer demand patterns or a competitive action.
Astute timing can give strategic advantage
Technology companies that continuously scan the landscape for signals of change and perform analysis and due diligence on that information can use the resulting insight to time the strategic entry of a new product or service into the market.
For example, Apple has transformed the market for mobile devices and services and the music industry1 by launching the first smartphone application store and the first successful online music store2, respectively.
When the decision for market entry is made and the timing is right, winners are further defined by speed-to-market. Speed-to-market is a function of other characteristics of a company, such as the resiliency of its business model, flexibility of its organization and the effectiveness of its stakeholder communications (e.g., proper education of stakeholders enhances first-mover advantage and minimizes first-mover risk).
Lessons learned
Successful technology companies have become adept at tracking technology advances, legislative developments, consumer demand patterns and competitive activities and, more importantly, anticipating changes in those market variables.
Given the ever-increasing, and potentially overwhelming, amount of available market data, it is essential for companies to stay attuned to changes in the market that might provide clear signals of a tipping point in order to avoid missing the market.
1 "How the iPod changed everything; While pirates bled the music industry, other businesses rode the tide and collected the booty. Former Apple insiders tell how Steve Jobs did it," The Globe and Mail, 12 May 2009, via Dow Jones Factiva.
2 "Apple’s new iPad coming soon," Macon Telegraph, 18 March 2010, via Dow Jones Factiva.
