How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors Behind Every Successful Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration

by Professor Bent Flyvbjerg

But the first-mover advantage is greatly overstated. In a watershed study, researchers compared the fates of “pioneer” companies that had been the first to exploit a market and “settlers” that had followed the pioneers into the market. Drawing on data from five hundred brands in fifty product categories, they found that almost half of pioneers failed, compared to 8 percent of settlers. The surviving pioneers took 10 percent of their market, on average, compared to 28 percent for settlers. Getting into the market early was indeed important—“early market leaders have much greater long-term success,” the researchers noted—but those “early” market leaders “enter an average of 13 years after pioneers.”7 The consensus of researchers today is that, yes, being first to market can confer advantages in certain specific circumstances, but it comes at the terrible cost of an inability to learn from the experience of others.