Fast Second: How Successful Companies Bypass Radical Innovation to Enter and Dominate New Markets

Fast Second: How Successful Companies Bypass Radical Innovation to Enter and Dominate New Markets

Constantinos Markides and Paul A. GeroskiJossey-Bass Wiley£19.99ISBN: 0787971545

The skill-sets of many (probably most) established companies, according to these authors, are far better suited to scaling up newly created markets pioneered by others (in other words, being “fast seconds”) than to creating these markets from scratch.

This book explores the characteristics of new markets, describes the skills needed to create and compete in them, and shows how these skills match up with different types of companies. It does this by drawing on examples of successful fast-second firms such as Microsoft, Amazon, Canon, JVC and Heinz – among others. These are all organisations which have entered markets early – but not necessarily first, preferring to see the experiences of others who have“blazed the trail” and shown the market opportunity and also, very importantly, the pitfalls awaiting the first or early entrants. This may be a“cultural” or “attitudinal” issue: the skills, mind-sets,and attitudes required to create a radically new market not only differ from those needed to grow and consolidate the market but also conflict with one another. Firms that are good at creation are unlikely also to be good at scaling up. Large, established companies may not have the skills and mind-sets needed for creating radically new markets, nor can they easily develop those skills and mind-sets because they conflict with those they have and need in their existing businesses. However, these corporations do have the skills and mind-sets that are needed for taking new market niches developed by others and scaling them up into mass markets.

Established corporations should therefore consider subcontracting the creation of new, radical products to start-up firms and concentrate their efforts on consolidating those markets after they have been ignited. This is a model that is widely used in creative industries such as book publishing,theatre, galleries, and movie making, where companies live and die on their ability to continuously bring creative new products to the market.