2021 Volume 10 Issue 1 Pages 168-173
In the prior literatures, a dominant design defined as a result of continuous innovation makes matured market and commoditization of the product business. To prevent maturity, manufacturers have to make discontinuous innovation which is occasionally lose their incumbent advantages. Thus, the incumbents must not go carelessly closer to discontinuous and disrupt innovation because it might allow newcomers enter into the market easily. We argue the incumbents’ failure process which their overreacted R&D makes discontinuous innovation lead the newcomers’ advantage. To show the process, we discuss case studies of TOTO and LIXIL, 2 major incumbent manufacturers in toilet industry developed new integrated toilet products and Panasonic entering to the market as a newcomer. Such a radical R&D by incumbents was a reasonable strategy for competition with mutual enemies. However, when the discontinuous R&D might lose barriers to entry against newcomers, a newcomer can get a chance to invade the impregnable market.
