Subject: Re: OT: A little levity
In a conversation I had this morning: automakers have been pushing prices higher and higher, in their quest for ever fatter profit margins, and enabling the higher prices

If this isn’t a case of the Innovator’s Dilemma, even though the Big Three long ago ceased being innovators.

Basically it says that established marketplace holders go upmarket because that’s where the profits are, and newcomers jump in at the low end, usually a place where profits are scarce to non-existent. But after a short while they have garnered some market share, and more importantly trust with buyers and knowledge to make operations more efficient, and they they, too, go upmarket chasing the old guys out of their comfy positions.

The first Japanese entrants were Datsun, Honda, and Toyota. After a decade or two they launched Acura, Lexus, and Infiniti. The book Innovators Dilemma offers several other examples: the makers of disk drives, the entire computer industry (where the big boys like Digital and IBM ignored the PC until it was too late. Likewise Kodak to digital photography (even though they invented it!), Blockbuster to Netflix, Sony’s transistor radios, and others.

I expect “the Big 3” will be an ever diminishing force in the years ahead, not that they haven’t already acquired that reputation already.