Discovering new markets

Markets that do not exist cannot be analyzed:

Organization’s must discover them.
Not only are the markets for innovative technologies unknown
at the time of their development, they are unknowable.

The strategies and plans that managers formulate

for confronting disruptive technological
change(innovation), therefore, should be plans for
learning and discovery rather than plans for
execution.

We are taught to deal with new products and

projects in a particular way. We were told to first
 Identify need
 Identify right market, right segment etc.
If you are dealing with something that can be new
to the existing market, an innovation, how can we
determine need, right market, right segment.
Imagine a market research conducted in late
1980’s when people only knew of color televisions
and VCR’s.
We are wanting to know from them if computers
were launched would they buy them.

If very little was known about computers in those

days would a customer be able to make a decision
on purchase of computers if he is unable to figure
out how computers are likely fulfill his important
needs.
Only after computers got launched in the 1990’s
and everything , everywhere was operated with
computers it became clear to people how
important were computers.

What this means, however, is that much of what the best

executives in successful companies have learned about
managing newer products is not relevant to innovation.
Most marketers, for example, have been schooled
extensively, at universities and on the job, in the
important art of listening to their customers, but few
have any training in how to discover markets that do not
yet exist.
The problem with our experience is that we have been
considering newer products or ideas for market
launches by using available data such as costs, expected
financial returns etc.

When it comes to innovation everything is so unknown,

there is no existing data.

How are you going to make decisions,putting to use the

methods that were taught to you in your management
school.
These methods demand adequate information when
none exists, accurate estimates of financial returns
when neither revenues nor costs can be known, and
management by planning and budgeting, when all you
have is a hunch or faith in an idea.