will hopefully [but not probably] put the last nail on the coffin of that myth-of-myths – “the first mover advantage”:
“Everybody thinks that it’s the market pioneers who have the best name recognition, the highest market share, and the most enduring market leadership….Right? In order to test the truth of this conventional wisdom, Gerard Tellis and Peter Golder carried out a decade-long historical analysis of 66 markets, as they evolved over the decades. Their discoveries, as reported for the first time in this book, will shock the business community. After exposing the limitations of prior studies that extolled the success of pioneers, the authors find that pioneers mostly fail, have low market share, and are rarely enduring market leaders. In addition, they found that the current trend of staking everything on getting there first all-too-often leads companies to embrace a disastrous strategy of rushing to market with incomplete, inferior, and flawed products.”
[ via
bblog
]