"New technologies commoditize old sources of advantage. Consider the invention of the camera: Portrait painters could not adapt by simply deploying the new technology—using the camera to make their workflows faster and more efficient—because photography had commoditized their offering wholesale, reducing customers' willingness to pay and drying up their value pool."
When new technologies emerge, they often render existing sources of competitive advantage obsolete rather than simply enhancing them. The camera exemplifies this dynamic: portrait painters could not maintain their market position by merely adopting photography to streamline operations. Photography fundamentally commoditized portraiture, drastically reducing what customers would pay and collapsing the entire value pool that previously supported portrait painters. This pattern demonstrates that technological disruption operates at a deeper level than efficiency gains—it restructures entire markets and customer valuations, making incremental adoption of new tools insufficient for businesses relying on now-commoditized offerings.
#technological-disruption #competitive-advantage-commoditization #market-transformation #business-adaptation
Read at Harvard Business Review
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]