The Strategic Path for Achieving Market Leadership within an Innovation-Driven Industry—The HDTV Case Example

A winning competitive strategy for an innovation like high definition TV depends on formulating a proper long-term vision of an accessible market goal and of the possible paths leading to it. Two dimensions are of major importance in selecting the optimum path: the importance of barriers to the innovation in terms of new technologies and infrastructure displacement implications and the incremental value of the innovation to users. Phase diagrams enable one to plot competitors' actual and future positions and assess relative risks and returns. A technology strategy that takes these dimensions into account is easier to formulate, and its outcome may be almost predictable.