To some degree WordPerfect also failed due to a classic "Innovator's Dilemma" situation. They had a huge customer base of MS-DOS users and tried to keep them happy by maintaining a similar user experience in the Windows edition. And they were fairly successful it that goal, but the product ended up looking weird and counter intuitive to new users who were familiar with the standard Windows look and feel.
The lesson is that sometimes you need to have the courage to disregard what existing customers want.
> The lesson is that sometimes you need to have the courage to disregard what existing customers want.
The problem is that this can kill you, too. If you abandon your current customers, chances are that they’ll choose a new solution because you’ve taken away their “easy path” upgrade and also pissed them off. You also send a message to your potential new customers that you won’t care about them if it becomes inconvenient.
This is the real innovators dilemma: there is no path to guaranteed (or even likely) victory. You can take a chance on the future but it is likely to kill you faster than clinging to the past.
Sure there are no guarantees. Even leaders who understand the innovator's dilemma eventually miss a disruptive shift in the market and lose their dominant position. That's why I'm not too concerned about the current dominance of large tech companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook. In 50 years MBA students will probably be reading case studies about how they screwed up and were acquired for pennies on the dollar by competitors who don't even exist today.
