Learn in the textbookInnovation Theory and the Three Barriers to Commercialization
DefinitionThe innovator's dilemma (イノベーションのジレンマ) is what happens when a successful, well-run large company pours its effort into its existing customers and into improving its current technology, falls behind the market shift brought by a new technology, and loses its position.
ExplanationImprovements that keep raising the performance of existing products are called sustaining innovation, while a technology that starts out weaker but wins new customers by being cheaper and simpler is called disruptive innovation. Established leaders stumble because they focus so heavily on the former that they respond too late to the latter.
AnalogyIt is like a long-established maker that kept refining high-end film cameras, dismissed digital cameras at first for their rough image quality, and then found the market had been taken by them.
Memory hookThe name comes from the title of the book by Clayton Christensen, who proposed the idea. A dilemma is a bind where either choice causes trouble, and here it captures the paradox of sound decisions backfiring.