Fast Second: How Smart Companies Bypass Radical Innovation to Enter and Dominate New Markets - Hardcover

Markides, Constantinos C.; Geroski, Paul A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0787971545 ISBN 13: 9780787971540

Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 2004

Synopsis

Discover why being a "fast second" is often more financially rewarding than being at the cutting edge.

If you get there first, you'll lead the pack, right? Not necessarily! The skill-sets of most established companies, say strategy experts Constantinos Markides and Paul Geroski, are far better suited to scaling up newly created markets pioneered by others (in other words, being "fast seconds") than to creating these markets from scratch. In Fast Second, they explore the characteristics of new markets, describe the skills needed to create and compete in them, and show how these skills match up with different types of companies. Drawing on examples of successful fast-second firms such as Microsoft, Amazon, Canon, JVC, Heinz, and many others, they illustrate how to determine which new markets have the potential to be successful and how to move into them before the competition does, when to make a move into a new market, how to scale up a market, where to position a company in the market, and whether to be a colonizer or a consolidator.

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About this title

From the Back Cover

Why Big, Established Companies Should Aim to Be "Fast Second" Rather Than Pioneers of Radically New Markets

If your organization aspires to "create" or conquer the new markets of the twenty-first century, Fast Second offers concrete advice on how to go about achieving this. Internationally acclaimed strategy experts Constantinos Markides and Paul Geroski explore:

• How radical innovation creates new-to-the-world markets
• What the structural characteristics of early markets are and the implications for prospective new entrants
• How established firms can enter these markets and when is the right time to make their move
• What smart successful firms do to scale up new markets
• How to position one's company in markets that are being consolidated
• How to evaluate if your organization should be a pioneer or a fast-second consolidator

"This is more than just an interesting new business book. It is a bold challenge of the pervasive conventional wisdom of building breakthrough, innovative capability as a foundation stone of competitive advantage. Through their strong and clear argument and their richly detailed examples, these leading strategic thinkers present a provocative set of ideas that no manager (or management teacher) can afford to ignore."
— Christopher A. Bartlett, Thomas D. Casserly, Jr. Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

"Fast Second will force cutting-edge leaders of big, established companies to totally rethink radical innovation. Conquering radical new markets is about timing and a smart strategy for scaling them up, not creating them."
— Kathleen M. Eisenhardt, Stanford W. Ascherman M.D. Professor, Stanford University, and coauthor, Competing on the Edge: Strategy as Structured Chaos

From the Inside Flap

Fast Second

First movers into a new market have the edge, right? Not necessarily! In this compelling book, international strategy experts Constantinos Markides and Paul Geroski show that pioneers who have created markets through radical innovation are almost never the companies that scale these markets up and conquer them. There is a very good reason for this: the skills, mind-sets, and attitudes required for creating a radically new market not only differ from those needed to grow and consolidate the market but also conflict with one another. Firms that are good at creation are unlikely to be good at scaling up.

What is more, big, established companies do not have the skills and mind-sets needed for creating radically new markets, nor can they easily develop those skills and mind-sets because they conflict with those they have and need in their existing businesses. However, these corporations do have the skills and mind-sets that are needed for taking new market niches developed by others and scaling them up into mass markets. Established corporations should therefore subcontract the creation of new, radical products to start-up firms and concentrate their efforts on consolidating the markets. This is a model that is widely used in creative industries such as book publishing, theater, galleries, and movie making, where companies live and die on their ability to continuously bring creative new products to the market.

Fast Second draws from a rich body of academic research on radical innovation and cites illustrative examples of successful fast-second firms such as Microsoft, Proctor & Gamble, Amazon, Canon, JVC, Heinz, and many others to propose a radical new innovation model for companies that aspire to create radically new markets.

Edition details

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0787971545
• ISBN 13: 9780787971540
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208