Firms often don’t need to respond to decouplers if they don’t threaten a significant portion of market share. Before mounting a response, in line with the discussion in Chapter 5, it’s important to consider if you need to respond at all. This decision entails balancing the cost of responding (financial and management’s time) with the risk of loss to the established business if you don’t respond. As regards the latter, executives at incumbent companies must consider two types of risk: the risk that a decoupler will enter the market, and the risk that it will steal a significant portion of your
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