The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain

by Annie Murphy Paul

Gerard Tellis and Peter Golder, both professors of marketing, conducted a historical analysis of fifty consumer product categories (including diapers, from which the Pampers versus Chux example was taken). Their results showed that the failure rate of “market pioneers” is an alarming 47 percent, while the mean market share they capture is only 10 percent. Far better than being first, Tellis and Golder concluded, is being what some have called a “fast second”: an agile imitator. Companies that capitalize on others’ innovations have “a minimal failure rate” and “an average market share almost three times that of market pioneers,” they found. In this category they include Timex, Gillette, and Ford, firms that are often recalled—wrongly—as being first in their field.