The limits of innovation

Future businesses must learn at high speed, because the faster a company learns, the sooner its products achieve mainstream status. The computer industry is full of future businesses chronically hooked on mainstreaming: if a software company fails to gain a Lanchester share of its market in less than two or three years, the stockholders dump their shares, profit-sharing executives leave in droves, and the press goes wild. (See ibid., Dec. 1995, p. 10, and Jan. 1996, pp. 10-13, for an explanation of the New Lanchester Strategy.) Are there limitations to living in real time? There sure are. In fact, the most dangerous limits are the tricky limitations of innovation-the juice that keeps Siliwood going. (Siliwood isn´t a place; it´s a state of mind combining the innovation of Silicon Valley and the trendiness of Hollywood.) Innovative products like personal digital assistants (PDAs) have been a big disappointment because they sputtered right past the 2-3 year time limit in which a computer product is expected to flood consumerland. An examination of the PDA segment of Siliwood is a good case study that shows how the limits of innovation can spoil a perfectly good business plan