Ch 7 Summary

It is not possible to analyze a market that doesn't exist. Suppliers and consumers must discover them together. This makes planning for these markets very difficult, but they can be very lucrative. Normal markets are sustaining markets and planning for them is much different. This is what most managers are accustomed to planning for. Forecasting for disruptive markets can be very difficult. When a company thinks a new technology will do well, such as the PDA market, they will invest heavily in it, like HP did with the Kittyhawk. The Disk/Trend Report showed that showed that this disruptive technology would turn into a sustaining technology, but this didn't happen. Once they had exhausted their finances into the Kittyhawk, and the PDA market flopped, other markets such as the video game market wanted the Kittyhawk, but HP was reluctant to modify their design to fit this new disruptive technology. Honda thought that their small motorbikes would be a big hit in the US like they were in Japan, but the motors would fail on long distance travels. It was only until one of the salesmen rode it in the desert that they found a new market for their bike. This shows how disruptive technologies cannot be planned for and the areas they are marketed for are not necessarily the ones they are fit for.