Pacher Explains Why He Predicts WiiHD Believes Will Will Lose MarketShare

[Alby_da_Wolf]

mai said:

Alby_da_Wolf said: 

2) The incumbent may cause the rise of a disruptor, but is not defined by it, while OTOH the disruptor rise when the incumbent exists. The concept of incumbent was already defined before Christrensen's theories and is used also in antitrust issues, for example. And the incumbent doesn't become so when it acknowledges the beginning of a disruptor's rise, it becomes so before, as you said also just reacting to competitors, that aren't necessarily disruptors. Incumbent's concept is wider than the particular meaning Christensen uses. Nintendo currently is still disruptive with 3DS and its portable market strategies, but has become more conservative in the home console market: yes I'm exaggerating saying it has already switched from simple leader to incumbent, but the risk is there, Nintendo already switched to incumbent behaviour in the past, before becoming again disruptive with DS and Wii.

Actually the whole Christensen theory was defined well before Chirtensen by James G. March back in 1990, in fact, the idea behind disruption was derived by management theoretics from system theory and theory of adaptive control (and I'm sure there's more). Christensen's work is valuable because it's much more detailed, the one thing it's lacking at this point is math apparatus, but I think in his last book he said he will address this issue and implement methods of quantitative measurements.

But back on topic. To the best of my knowledge the term "incumbent " was never used by J.G. March though, like you said, the concept was defined, and even it's used or there're some other meanings of the word, we're still obliged to use it exactly in the meaning intended by theory invetor, C.Christensen, who defines incumbent through disruptor and vice-versa. It's bare minimum of any science, stick to terms, and if you use the same word in different meaning - define it beforehand so people will udnderstand you. In Christensen's terms Nintendo currently isn't an incumbent.

Sure, but I don't strictly stick to Christensen theories too, or better, I don't believe the competitors are really playing either as ideal disruptor or as ideal incumbent now (while at the beginning of this gen Nintendo was very close to the ideal disruptor and Sony to the ideal incumbent, and I can't really qualify MS role with its clumsy throwing away its head start).

BTW, "incumbent" is very used to define former monopolists or oligopolists of utilities like phones and electricity, and their behaviour towards emerging competitors, both those playing traditionally and the disruptive ones. In the wider sense "incumbent" is defined by the behaviour towards smaller but growing competitors in general, and Christensen knows this meaning, what he found studying the disruptors' success stories is that the typical incumbent reaction doesn't change towards disruptors, it often keeps on reacting to them in the same way it uses towards normal competitors, and that's the reason why it so often fails.