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

by Clayton

RIM’s executives could believe that their market is structured by product categories characterized by some moniker such as “We compete in handheld wireless devices.” If so, they will see the BlackBerry as competing against products such as the Palm Pilot, Handspring’s Treo, Sony’s Clié, mobile telephone handsets made by Nokia, Motorola, and Samsung, and Microsoft Pocket-PC-based devices such as Compaq’s I-Paq and Hewlett-Packard’s Jordana. In order to get ahead of these competitors, RIM would need to develop better products faster than the competition. Sony’s Clié, for example, has a digital camera. Nokia’s phones offer not just live conversation and voice messages, but short text messaging as well. The Palm Pilot’s consummately convenient calendaring, rolodexing, and note-keeping features have almost become industry standards. And does the fact that Compaq and Hewlett-Packard offer stripped-down versions of Word and Excel software mean that RIM will be left behind if it does not follow suit? Defining the market by the characteristics of the product causes managers to think that in order to beat the competition, RIM would need to build some number of these features into its next-generation BlackBerry device. RIM’s competitors, of course, would be thinking the same thing—all trying to cram their competitors’ superior features into their products in a race to get ahead of the pack.