Joseph L. Bower Quotes

10 Sourced Quotes

We contest the conclusions of scholars such as Tushman and Anderson (1986), who have argued that incumbent firms are most threatened by attacking entrants when the innovation in question destroys, or does not build upon, the competence of the firm. We observe that established firms, though often at great cost, have led their industries in developing critical competence-destroying technologies, when the new technology was needed to meet existing customers' demands.

Joseph L. Bower
One of the most consistent patterns in business is the failure of leading companies to stay at the top of their industries when technologies or markets change. Goodyear and Firestone entered the radial-tire market quite late. Xerox let Canon create the small-copier market. Bucyrus-Erie allowed Caterpillar and Deere to take over the mechanical excavator market. Sears gave way to Wal-Mart.

Joseph L. Bower
Each time a disruptive technology emerged, between one-half and two-thirds of the established manufacturers failed to introduce models employing the new architecture-in stark contrast to their timely launches of critical sustaining technologies.

Joseph L. Bower
The definitive examination of strategic investment from the viewpoint of the people who run the company—the CEO and principal officers. Includes four case histories that follow specific investment projects from their inception to their approval by top management.

Joseph L. Bower
Different types of technological innovations affect performance trajectories in different ways. On the one hand, sustaining technologies tend to maintain a rate of improvement; that is, they give customers something more or better in the attributes they already value... On the other hand, disruptive technologies introduce a very different package of attributes from the one mainstream customers historically value, and they often perform far worse along one or two dimensions that are particularly important to those customers.

Joseph L. Bower
[Firms rotate managers ] across functional and divisional lines to help build cooperative climate and contribute to the development of generalist viewpoints... [This practice moves] managers at the business level... where new strategic ideas are developed... every two to three years.

Joseph L. Bower
When the technology that has the potential for revolutionizing an industry emerges, established companies typically see it as unattractive: it's not something their mainstream customers want, and its projected profit margins aren't sufficient to cover big-company cost structure. As a result, the new technology tends to get ignored in favor of what's currently popular with the best customers. But then another company steps in to bring the innovation to a new market. Once the disruptive technology becomes established there, smaller-scale innovation rapidly raise the technology's performance on attributes that mainstream customers' value.

Joseph L. Bower
While evidence reveals the relative unimportance of a particular technique of financial analysis and limited usefulness of the [theoretical] financial model, it also indicates that management can control the investment process.

Joseph L. Bower
To make further progress it is necessary to go beyond the financial model.

Joseph L. Bower
The leading attempt at a complete normative theory of planning and resource allocation is provided by the concept of "strategy."

Joseph L. Bower