The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth (Creating and Sustainability Successful Growth)

by Clayton

new-market disruption, however? There are hundreds of millions of nonconsumers of residential air conditioning in China, who have been blocked from that market because the power-hungry, expensive machines that historically have been available don’t fit in the average family’s pocketbook or apartment. If Hitachi could design a $49.95 product that would easily slip into the window of a cramped Shanghai apartment and reduce the temperature and humidity in a ten-foot by ten-foot room with ten amps of current, things might get interesting—because once Hitachi had a business model that could make money at that price point, taking on the rest of the up-market world would be easy. Parenthetically, while Western executives are understandably concerned about the threat that low-cost manufacturing in China poses to them, our guess is that China’s greatest competitive asset is the unfathomable amount of nonconsumption in its markets, which makes them fertile ground for new-market disruptive companies of many sorts.