Sustaining technologies are small improvements to previously created products. They, by definition, are innovations upon disruptive innovation. The zero to one move creates the market, displaces old technology and sustaining technologies are meant to maximize the efficiency at which this new product operates. Generally, we tend to see sustaining technologies translated into annual rates of productivity improvement.
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While reading The Innovator's Dilemma, I encountered the following statement:
“Established firms were not only leaders in innovation with regards to the development of risky technologies, but literally every single subsequent sustaining innovation that was registered in the history of the industry”.
Even more interestingly, almost all new companies that tried to enter the market at a point at which a sustaining technology was being introduced, went bankrupt. The following image shows the number of firms, the shadow being established ones, that were participating in markets of sustaining innovation.
They dominated all along. New players cannot compete in products that are being improved upon. Startups cannot displace giants in their field, maybe due to accumulated know-how, distribution channel. Ironically, new firms are the ones that dominate in products that imply disruptive innovation, which end up displacing established leaders.
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