{"id":254390,"date":"2019-03-07T17:36:45","date_gmt":"2019-03-07T15:36:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/informante.web.na\/?p=254390"},"modified":"2019-03-07T20:06:32","modified_gmt":"2019-03-07T18:06:32","slug":"this-week-in-trustco-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/informante.web.na\/?p=254390","title":{"rendered":"This week in Trustco"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/informante.web.na\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/This-week-in-Trustco.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-254400\" src=\"https:\/\/informante.web.na\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/This-week-in-Trustco.png\" alt=\"This week in Trustco\" width=\"960\" height=\"729\" srcset=\"https:\/\/informante.web.na\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/This-week-in-Trustco.png 960w, https:\/\/informante.web.na\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/This-week-in-Trustco-300x228.png 300w, https:\/\/informante.web.na\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/This-week-in-Trustco-768x583.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Innovator\u2019s Dilemma<\/p>\n<p>Too often in business we tend to revere success and demonize failure. We build up firms as \u2018Titans of Industry\u2019 while the \u2018formerly successful\u2019 are relegated to the provenance of jokes, and examples of what-not-to-do. Yet we neglect to mention that once upon a time, these Titans of today were nothing but upstarts in the realm of prior Titans. In Trustco, we study failures as well as successes, and with good reason.<br \/>\nIt is not comfortable to study failure \u2013 indeed, common sense suggests that you should rather study what drives success, if you wish to replicate it. But the dark spectre no one wants to acknowledge, is that all failing businesses, just like many others, are presumably staffed with clever, capable people \u2013 they were, after all, the incumbents new competitors measured themselves against.<br \/>\nIn 1997, Clayton M Christenson published his book The Innovator\u2019s Dilemma. The Economist called it one of the six most important books about business ever written. It examines how the good and proper management that leads companies to success, are paradoxically also why they lose their positions of leadership. The quintessential innovator\u2019s dilemma.<br \/>\nThe key to understanding the innovator\u2019s dilemma lies in disruptive innovations. To quote Christensen:<br \/>\n&#8220;Generally, disruptive innovations were technologically straightforward, consisting of off-the-shelf components put together in a product architecture that was often simpler than prior approaches. They offered less of what customers in established markets wanted and so could rarely be initially employed there. They offered a different package of attributes valued only in emerging markets remote from, and unimportant to, the mainstream.&#8221;<br \/>\nDisruptive innovations often unseat successful, and well-managed companies even when they have a great customer focus, and invest heavily in research and development. Smaller, underserved markets are quite often neglected by these firms, due to small margins and an inability to provide adequate growth to a large firm. Hence, listening to your \u2018high-end, high-margin\u2019 customer, can be strategically counterproductive.<br \/>\nThis also overlaps with the incumbent misidentifying its market, focusing on the product it provides, and not the customer need it serves. Thus, when a disruptive innovator serves the low end of the market, to a customer who was previously not served, and who is willing to pay for a \u2018good-enough\u2019 product, but not a premium for enhancements, they are dismissed quite easily.<br \/>\nBut in the smaller emerging market, the cost of failure is not as high as for the incumbent. With iteration on product improvements, improvements to the disruptor\u2019s product are faster and more often, and soon the disruptor will have moved to a higher, more profitable segment. Since this segment is not as profitable for the incumbent, not much effort will be invested in maintaining market share, and it will move up-market.<br \/>\nThus an incumbent is pushed upwards and upwards, serving smaller and smaller markets, until the disruptive product meets the needs of the incumbents\u2019 most profitable market segment, and drives them out. Witness the decline of film cameras as digital cameras went from \u2018not very good, but cheap\u2019 to \u2018good enough for casual use, but keep film for quality\u2019 to the situation today, where a film camera is a novelty.<br \/>\nAfrica, as a whole, has been quite underserved by traditional \u2018First-world\u2019 type companies. Namibia, with its smaller market but quite developed economy and abundance of underserved clients, seems like fertile ground for a disruptive innovator. For incumbents, it would be wise to remember that it is better to make yourself obsolete, before someone else does. This is why Trustco takes all the necessary steps to stay ahead of the curve. We\u2019d rather out-innovate ourselves, before letting someone else do so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Innovator\u2019s Dilemma Too often in business we tend to revere success and demonize failure. We build up firms as \u2018Titans of Industry\u2019 while the \u2018formerly successful\u2019 are relegated to the provenance of jokes, and examples of what-not-to-do. Yet we neglect to mention that once upon a time, these Titans of today were nothing but &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":254400,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-254390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-trustco"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>This week in Trustco - Informant\u00e9<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Too often in business we tend to revere success and demonize failure. We build up firms as \u2018Titans of Industry\u2019 while the \u2018formerly successful\u2019 are\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/informante.web.na\/?p=254390\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"This week in Trustco - Informant\u00e9\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Too often in business we tend to revere success and demonize failure. We build up firms as \u2018Titans of Industry\u2019 while the \u2018formerly successful\u2019 are\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/informante.web.na\/?p=254390\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Informant\u00e9\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/informantenam\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-03-07T15:36:45+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-03-07T18:06:32+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/informante.web.na\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/This-week-in-Trustco.png?fit=960%2C729&ssl=1\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"960\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"729\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Desmond van Heerden\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@informantenews\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@informantenews\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Desmond van Heerden\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/informante.web.na\\\/?p=254390#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/informante.web.na\\\/?p=254390\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Desmond van Heerden\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/informante.web.na\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/fe448a2e68079bc355c3b180636710b0\"},\"headline\":\"This week in Trustco\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-03-07T15:36:45+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-03-07T18:06:32+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/informante.web.na\\\/?p=254390\"},\"wordCount\":614,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/informante.web.na\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/informante.web.na\\\/?p=254390#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/informante.web.na\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2019\\\/03\\\/This-week-in-Trustco.png\",\"articleSection\":[\"News\",\"Trustco\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-ZA\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/informante.web.na\\\/?p=254390\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/informante.web.na\\\/?p=254390\",\"name\":\"This week in Trustco - Informant\u00e9\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/informante.web.na\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/informante.web.na\\\/?p=254390#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/informante.web.na\\\/?p=254390#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/informante.web.na\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2019\\\/03\\\/This-week-in-Trustco.png\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-03-07T15:36:45+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-03-07T18:06:32+00:00\",\"description\":\"Too often in business we tend to revere success and demonize failure. 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