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I am not so surethis makes much of a point in the end. The whole Japanese revolution in tech organization from kanban to just in time was seen as a huge blow to the US but nevertheless most USA firms failed to change substantially for a considerable time. When in the late 19th century, soda manufacturing went under revolution in Europe, in UK leading etreptreneurs refused chnage in their core technology but won out in ancillary tech and market development that weilded a substaially different tech outcome and led to their continued reasonable success. In mid 19th the UK could just not copy or adapt tothe American System of Manufactures, but they hardly sunk under, adopting management and other changes to cope with failure at the level of actual machine changes.

The thing is, there are often a host of other, more organisational or market factors, seemingly distant from tech decision making, that serve to keep an established system from innovating towards a brash new tech based innovation trajectory. This may be at work here, it is difficult to forestall the style orntactic that could result in Japan from the China challenge here. I myself own a fine Japanese electric car and presume that it and its industry will survive. China can often move quicker because of its very differeing mix of factors of production, labout styles, rewards and skills and so on.. In the end what matters is the return to the entire system from a welfare economics point of view and/or the attitude helf on innovation by the big investment players in that industry, both of these hard to second guess, as the earlier historical examples suggest.

Prof Ian Inkster, SOAS, London University, UK.

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I'm not sure if you are saying 1) that innovation challenges that hurt a firm or industry's sales won't lead them to change: or 2) it doesn't matter because they will find other ways to succeed, or both. The first certainly happens a lot but not necessarily always; The second I disagree with: more often than not the consequences pf failure to adapt are adverse.

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Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma very much applies here. Those with less to loose - and fewer switching costs - can more wholeheartedly invest in electrification.

Collis and Montgomery's Resource Based View framework of tangible assets, intangible assets, and capabilities also apply, and that highlights some potential strengths - including cash flow, access to capital, manufacturing and distribution and support - that incumbents can bring to bear. (as you might guess, I use both in leading a Ford Motor case with undergrad and MBA students.)

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