If you want to know when top in their class companies lose their market leadership even by doing everything considered as “right” you should not wait to master “The Innovator’s Dilemma” by C. M. Christensen. Case studies from deriving from steel processing, engineering and IT industries rigidly analyzed by Christensen show how “missing on new waves of innovation” being introduced to the market may look like. Read it for being creator of these new waves of innovations of course.
Having spoken with dozens of investors, what counts in successful introduction invention to the market is their ability of getting “traction”, which is gaining, maintaining and indicating potential to growth of users of the invention. This is why innovators and early adopters should become your best friends in iterating, testing and improving core the concept you work on. They’ll be your first enthusiasts and concept advocates. You will find them not only in couple othousands of start-ups dedicated LinkedIn groups, but also at crowdfunding platforms we wrote some time ago.
If you seriously would like to change rules of the game, consider “think big, but start small” principle. In other words do a small pilot, prototype or demonstration and prove that you can gain and maintain users of what you work on. Then pitch an investor, or a company, which your invention will pose a potential threat.Being asked “What’s your traction?”, know how to answer it.
Someone wise once said that the real definition of innovation is successful commercialization of an invention 😉
