Types and patterns
- 2. Types and Patterns of Innovation 1. Tesla Motors In 2015, Tesla Motors was a $3.2 billion company on track to set history. It had created two cars that most people agreed were remarkable. Consumer reports had rated Tesla’s Model S the best car it had ever reviewed. Though it was not yet posting profits, sales were growing rapidly and analysts were hopeful that profits would soon follow. It had repaid its government loans ahead of the major auto conglomerates. Most importantly, it looked like it might survive. Perhaps even thrive. This was astonishing as there had been no other successful auto manufacturing start-up in the United States since the 1920s. The road leading up to Tesla’s position in 2015 had not always been smooth, and there were many doubts that still lingered. Tesla had benefited from the enthusiasm of the “eco-wealthy”—a rather narrow portion of the market. How would Tesla fare when it was in direct competition with General Motors, Ford, and Nissan for the mass market? Would it be able to turn a sustainable profit on its auto- making operations? Furthermore, some questioned whether Tesla’s goals to sell to the mass market even made sense. In the niche market, it had a privileged position with customers that were relatively price-insensitive and were seeking a stylish, high-performance car that made an environmental statement. To compete for the mass market, the car would have to provide good value for the money (involving trade-offs that might conflict with Chairman Elon Musk’s ideals), and the obstacles to charging would have to be overcome.
- 3. 2. History of Tesla In the year 2003, an engineer named Martin Eberhard was looking for his next big project. A tall, slim man with a mop of gray hair, Eberhard was a serial entrepreneur who had launched a number of start-ups, including a company called NuvoMedia, which he sold to Gemstar in a $187 million deal. Eberhard was also looking for a sports car that would be environmentally friendly—he had concerns about global warming and U.S. dependence on the Middle East for oil. When he didn’t find the car of his dreams on the market he began contemplating building one himself, even though he had zero experience in the auto industry. Eberhard noticed that many of the driveways that had a Toyota Prius hybrid electric vehicle (or “dork mobile” as he called it) also had expensive sports cars in them— making Eberhard speculate that there could be a market for a high-performance environmentally friendly car. As explained by Eberhard, “It was clear that people weren’t buying a Prius to save money on gas— gas was selling close to inflation– adjusted all-time lows. They were buying them to make a statement about the environment.”a 3. The Roadster The first Tesla prototype, named the Roadster, was based on the $45,000 Lotus Elise, a fast and light sports car that seemed perfect for the creation of Eberhard and Musk’s grand idea. The car would have 400 volts of electric potential, liquidcooled lithium ion batteries, and a series of silicon transistors that would give the car acceleration so powerful the driver would be pressed back against their seat.d It would be about as fast as a Porsche 911 Turbo, would not create a single emission, and would get about 220 miles on a single charge from the kind of outlet you would use to power a washing machine.e 4. The Model S Musk’s ambitions did not stop at a niche high-end car. He wanted to build a major U.S. auto company—a feat that had not been successfully accomplished since the 1920s. To do so, he knew he needed to introduce a less- expensive car that could attract a higher volume of sales, if not quite the mass market. In June of 2008, Tesla announced the Model S—a high-performance all-electric sedan that would sell for a price ranging from $57,400 to $77,400 and compete against cars like the BMW 5-series. The car would have an all-aluminum body, and a range of up to 300 miles per charge.g The Model S cost $500 million to develop,h however offsetting that cost was a $465 million loan Tesla received from the U.S. government to build the car, as part of the U.S. government’s initiative to promote the development of technologies that would help the United States to achieve energy independence
- 4. 5. The Future of Tesla By 2015, Tesla Motors was also in the process of developing a sport utility vehicle that seats seven, the Model X, which cost $250 million to develop and would be available in 2016.n This car was part of Musk’s longer-term ambition to tap a more mainstream market for the cars. Though Tesla’s moves had been bold and risky, its success thus far was inspiring. The company had survived its infancy, appeared to be solvent, and was meeting its sales objectives even though serious obstacles remained for electric vehicles. It was also competing against companies with far greater scale. As noted by O’Dell, a senior editor at auto information site Edmunds.com, on Tesla’s success, “A lot of people have been very, very skeptical . . . when you want to be an automaker, you are competing with multibillion-dollar conglomerates . . . It’s entrepreneurism on steroids . . . They had a huge learning curve but they’ve powered through it.” Theo O’Neill, an analyst at Wunderlich Securities adds that “It’s going to prove everybody in Detroit wrong . . . They all say what Tesla is doing isn’t possible.”o
- 5. OVERVIEW The previous chapters pointed out that technological innovation can come from many sources and take many forms. Different types of technological innovations offer different opportunities for organizations and society, and they pose different demands upon producers, users, and regulators. While there is no single agreed-upon taxonomy to describe different kinds of technological innovations, in this chapter we will review several dimensions that are often used to categorize technologies. These dimensions are useful for understanding some key ways that one innovation may differ from another. The path a technology follows through time is termed its technology trajectory. Technology trajectories are most often used to represent the technology’s rate of performance improvement or its rate of adoption in the marketplace. Though many factors can influence these technology trajectories (as discussed in both this chapter and the following chapters), some patterns have been consistently identified in technology trajectories across many industry contexts and over many periods. Understanding these patterns of technological innovation provides a useful foundation that we will build upon in the later chapters on formulating technology strategy. The chapter begins by reviewing the dimensions used to distinguish types of innovations. It then describes the s-curve patterns so often observed in both the rate of technology improvement and the rate of technology diffusion to the market. In the last section, the chapter describes research suggesting that technological innovation follows a cyclical pattern composed of distinct and reliably occurring phases. TYPES OF INNOVATION Technological innovations are often described using dimensions such as “radical” versus “incremental.” Different types of innovation require different kinds of underlying knowledge and have different impacts on the industry’s competitors and customers. Four of the dimensions most commonly used to categorize innovations are described here: product versus process innovation, radical versus incremental, competence enhancing versus competence destroying, and architectural versus component. Product Innovation versus Process Innovation Product innovations are embodied in the outputs of an organization—its goods or services. For example, Honda’s development of a new hybrid electric vehicle is a product innovation. Process innovations are innovations in the way an organization conducts its business, such as in the techniques of producing or marketing goods or services. Process innovations are often oriented toward improving the effectiveness or efficiency of production by, for example, reducing defect rates or increasing the quantity that may be produced in a given time. For example, a process innovation at a biotechnology firm might entail developing a genetic algorithm that can quickly search a set of disease-related genes to identify a target for therapeutic intervention. In this instance, the process innovation (the genetic algorithm) can speed up the firm’s ability to develop a product innovation (a new therapeutic drug).
- 6. NEXT……….. Radical Innovation versus Incremental Innovation One of the primary dimensions used to distinguish types of innovation is the continuum between radical versus incremental innovation. A number of definitions have been posed for radical innovation and incremental innovation, but most hinge on the degree to which an innovation represents a departure from existing practices.1 Thus radicalness might be conceived as the combination of newness and the degree of differentness. A technology could be new to the world, new to an industry, new to a firm, or new merely to an adopting business unit. A technology could be significantly different from existing products and processes or only marginally different. The most radical innovations would be new to the world and exceptionally different from existing products and processes. Competence-Enhancing Innovation versus Competence-Destroying Innovation Innovations can also be classified as competence enhancing versus competence destroying. An innovation is considered to be competence enhancing from the perspective of a particular firm if it builds on the firm’s existing knowledge base. For example, each generation of Intel’s microprocessors (e.g., 286, 386, 486, Pentium, Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium 4) builds on the technology underlying the previous Competenceenhancing (-destroying) innovation An innovation that builds on (renders obsolete) existing knowledge and skills. Whether an innovation is competence enhancing or competence destroying depends on whose perspective is being taken. An innovation can be competence enhancing to one firm, while competence destroying for another. 50 Part One Industry Dynamics of Technological Innovation generation. Thus, while each generation embodies innovation, these innovations leverage Intel’s existing competencies, making them more valuable
- 7. NEXT……… Architectural Innovation versus Component Innovation Most products and processes are hierarchically nested systems, meaning that at any unit of analysis, the entity is a system of components, and each of those components is, in turn, a system of finer components, until we reach some point at which the components are elementary particles.4 For example, a bicycle is a system of components such as a frame, wheels, tires, seat, brakes, and so on. Each of those components is also a system of components: The seat might be a system of components that includes a metal and plastic frame, padding, a nylon cover, and so on. Using the Dimensions Though the dimensions described above are useful for exploring key ways that one innovation may differ from another, these dimensions are not independent, nor do they offer a straightforward system for categorizing innovations in a precise and consistent manner. Each of the above dimensions shares relationships with others— for example, architectural innovations are often considered more radical and more competence destroying than component innovations. Furthermore, how an innovation is described on a dimension often depends on who is doing the describing and with what it is being compared. An all-electric vehicle, for example, might seem like a radical and competence destroying innovation to a manufacturer of internal combustion engines, but to a customer who only has to change how they fuel/charge the vehicle, it might seem like an incremental and competence- enhancing innovation
- 8. TECHNOLOGY S-CURVES Both the rate of a technology’s performance improvement and the rate at which the technology is adopted in the marketplace repeatedly have been shown to conform to an s-shape curve. Though s-curves in technology performance and s-curves in technology diffusion are related (improvements in performance may foster faster adoption, and greater adoption may motivate further investment in improving performance), they are fundamentally different processes. S-curves in technology improvement are described first, followed by s-curves in technology diffusion. This section also explains that despite the allure of using s-curves to predict when new phases of a technology’s life cycle will begin, doing so can be misleading.
- 9. S-Curves in Technological Improvement Many technologies exhibit an s-curve in their performance improvement over their lifetimes.7 When a technology’s performance is plotted against the amount of effort and money invested in the technology, it typically shows slow initial improvement, then accelerated improvement, then diminishing improvement (see Figure 3.1). Performance improvement in the early stages of a technology is slow because the fundamentals of the technology are poorly understood. Great effort may be spent exploring different paths of improvement or different drivers of the technology’s improvement. If the technology is very different from previous technologies, there may be no evaluation routines that enable researchers to assess its progress or its potential. Furthermore, until the technology has established a degree of legitimacy, it may be difficult to attract other researchers to participate in its development.8 However, as scientists or firms gain a deeper understanding of the technology, improvement begins to accelerate. The technology begins to gain legitimacy as a worthwhile endeavor, attracting other developers. Furthermore, measures for assessing the technology are developed, permitting researchers to target their attention toward those activities that reap the greatest improvement per unit of effort, enabling performance to increase rapidly. However, at some point, diminishing returns to effort begin to set in. As the technology begins to reach its inherent limits, the cost of each marginal improvement increases, and the s-curve flattens.
- 10. S-Curves in Technology Diffusion S-curves are also often used to describe the diffusion of a technology. Unlike s-curves in technology performance, s-curves in technology diffusion are obtained by plotting the cumulative number of adopters of the technology against time. This yields an s-shape curve because adoption is initially slow when an unfamiliar technology is introduced to the market; it accelerates as the technology becomes better understood and utilized by the mass market, and eventually the market is saturated so the rate of new adoptions declines. For instance, when electronic calculators were introduced to the market, they were first adopted by the relatively small pool of scientists and engineers. This group had previously used slide rules. Then the calculator began to penetrate the larger markets of accountants and commercial users, followed by the still larger market that included students and the general public. After these markets had become saturated, fewer opportunities remained for new adoptions
- 11. S-Curves as a Prescriptive Tool Several authors have argued that managers can use the s-curve model as a tool for predicting when a technology will reach its limits and as a prescriptive guide for whether and when the firm should move to a new, more radical technology.14 Firms can use data on the investment and performance of their own technologies, or data on the overall industry investment in a technology and the average performance achieved by multiple producers. Managers could then use these curves to assess whether a technology appears to be approaching its limits or to identify new technologies that might be emerging on s-curves that will intersect the firm’s technology s-curve. Managers could then switch s-curves by acquiring or developing the new technology. However, as a prescriptive tool, the s-curve model has several serious limitations.
- 12. Limitations of S-Curve Model as a Prescriptive Tool First, it is rare that the true limits of a technology are known in advance, and there is often considerable disagreement among firms about what a technology’s limits will be. Second, the shape of a technology’s s-curve is not set in stone. Unexpected changes in the market, component technologies, or complementary technologies can shorten or extend the life cycle of a technology. Furthermore, firms can influence the shape of the s-curve through their development activities. For example, firms can sometimes stretch the s- curve through implementing new development approaches or revamping the architecture design of the technology
- 13. TECHNOLOGY CYCLES The s-curve model above suggests that technological change is cyclical: Each new s-curve ushers in an initial period of turbulence, followed by rapid improvement, then diminishing returns, and ultimately is displaced by a new technological discontinuity.16 The emergence of a new technological discontinuity can overturn the existing competitive structure of an industry, creating new leaders and new losers. Schumpeter called this process creative destruction, and argued that it was the key driver of progress in a capitalist society.17 Several studies have tried to identify and characterize the stages of the technology cycle in order to better understand why some technologies succeed and others fail, and whether established firms or new firms are more likely to be successful in introducing or adopting a new technology.
- 14. Summary of Chapter 1. Different dimensions have been used to distinguish types of innovation. Some of the most widely used dimensions include product versus process innovation, radical versus incremental innovation, competence-enhancing versus competence destroying innovation, and architectural versus component innovation. 2. A graph of technology performance over cumulative effort invested often exhibits an s-shape curve. This suggests that performance improvement in a new technology is initially difficult and costly, but, as the fundamental principles of the technology are worked out, it then begins to accelerate as the technology becomes better understood, and finally diminishing returns set in as the technology approaches its inherent limits. 3. A graph of a technology’s market adoption over time also typically exhibits an s-shape curve. Initially the technology may seem uncertain and there may be great costs or risks for potential adopters. Gradually, the technology becomes more certain (and its costs may be driven down), enabling the technology to be adopted by larger market segments. Eventually the technology’s diffusion slows as it reaches market saturation or is displaced by a newer technology. 4. The rate at which a technology improves over time is often faster than the rate at which customer requirements increase over time. This means technologies that initially met the demands of the mass market may eventually exceed the needs of the market. Furthermore, technologies that initially served only low-end customers (segment zero) may eventually meet the needs of the mass market and capture the market share that originally went to the higher-performing technology. 5. Technological change often follows a cyclical pattern. First, a technological discontinuity causes a period of turbulence and uncertainty, and producers andconsumers explore the different possibilities enabled by the new technology. As producers and customers begin to converge on a consensus of the desired technological configuration, a dominant design emerges. The dominant design provides a stable benchmark for the industry, enabling producers to turn their attention to increasing production efficiency and incremental product improvements. This cycle begins again with the next technological discontinuity.
- 15. NETX… 6. The first design based on the initial technological discontinuity rarely becomes the dominant design. There is usually a period in which firms produce a variety of competing designs of the technology before one design emerges as dominant. 7. The dominant design rarely embodies the most advanced technological features available at the time of its emergence. It is instead the bundle of features that best meets the requirements of the majority of producers and customers.
- 16. THANK YOU