With respect to (25) first to market: I have to disagree strongly. It’s actually very rare for the business that first reaches the market with a product will be the one most successful with it, or associated. Often it’s not even the 2nd or 3rd.
And there’s a simple reason for that: Whoever reaches the market first can not from the mistakes of whoever came before, or get inspiration and/or ideas and/or customer reviews to take into account.
A few examples:
Automobiles: The household names are Ford, Chrysler, BMW. The first to market manufacturers either didn’t survives, or are low/er volume high end or luxury brands.
Aerospace: de Havilland Comet was the first commercial jet airliner. However the household names are Boeing with their 7x7 and Airbus.
Internet Search Engines: AltaVista was first to market. Hardly anybody remembers it. Google came only much, much later.
Social Networks: Who remembers MySpace? Geocities?
Computer Peripherals: Adlib vs. SoundBlaster
The list goes on and on. In general it’s often the companies that later arrive to the market that have success, for they can learn from the experiences of their “quicker” competitors, and no longer have to do the legwork of making potential customers want a product hitherto unknown.
While I also agree the saying “earlier bird gets the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese” is quite often very worthy of remembering I think the examples might not be the best and it probably needs how the markets and industries evolved. The question is probably more along the lines of innovation that survived and grew and if the first mover basically lost everything or made a good return and moved on letting others pay up for their work.
I think a number of your examples are perhaps special cases, or at least cases with some unique aspect. Most seem to include very high fixed costs and exhibit rather large network externality effects. In such settings it’s not too surprising to see long-run consolidation into a few key organizations (names) with all the precursors names dropped. But doesn’t mean those earlier builders lost out (and potentially enjoyed greater rates of return on investment).
An example here might be UUNet. Forget search or social networking if UUNet (or someone like it) did not commercialize the technology of science backbone between the universities. They have not been around for over 30 years but was a very successful first (or at least very early, prior to “proven” space) mover.
With respect to (25) first to market: I have to disagree strongly. It’s actually very rare for the business that first reaches the market with a product will be the one most successful with it, or associated. Often it’s not even the 2nd or 3rd.
And there’s a simple reason for that: Whoever reaches the market first can not from the mistakes of whoever came before, or get inspiration and/or ideas and/or customer reviews to take into account.
A few examples:
Automobiles: The household names are Ford, Chrysler, BMW. The first to market manufacturers either didn’t survives, or are low/er volume high end or luxury brands.
Aerospace: de Havilland Comet was the first commercial jet airliner. However the household names are Boeing with their 7x7 and Airbus.
Internet Search Engines: AltaVista was first to market. Hardly anybody remembers it. Google came only much, much later.
Social Networks: Who remembers MySpace? Geocities?
Computer Peripherals: Adlib vs. SoundBlaster
The list goes on and on. In general it’s often the companies that later arrive to the market that have success, for they can learn from the experiences of their “quicker” competitors, and no longer have to do the legwork of making potential customers want a product hitherto unknown.
While I also agree the saying “earlier bird gets the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese” is quite often very worthy of remembering I think the examples might not be the best and it probably needs how the markets and industries evolved. The question is probably more along the lines of innovation that survived and grew and if the first mover basically lost everything or made a good return and moved on letting others pay up for their work.
I think a number of your examples are perhaps special cases, or at least cases with some unique aspect. Most seem to include very high fixed costs and exhibit rather large network externality effects. In such settings it’s not too surprising to see long-run consolidation into a few key organizations (names) with all the precursors names dropped. But doesn’t mean those earlier builders lost out (and potentially enjoyed greater rates of return on investment).
An example here might be UUNet. Forget search or social networking if UUNet (or someone like it) did not commercialize the technology of science backbone between the universities. They have not been around for over 30 years but was a very successful first (or at least very early, prior to “proven” space) mover.