Be first, or be forgotten.

In the world of innovation, precision always loses out to speed.

People always remember who was first: Neil Armstrong, Secretariat (above), John Hancock.

But just try asking people who was the second person to step onto the moon, or which racehorse placed second in the 1973 Kentucky Derby, or who was the second person to sign America’s Declaration of Independence.*

It’s the same with new products and services. Being the first to market allows a company to define their niche in the minds of customers. Waiting to launch until perfection is achieved can cause a company to miss that all-important chance to be the one everyone else is evaluated against.

In some cases, the first product to go successfully to market can even create the vocabulary people use to refer to all products in that niche. People “Xerox” their documents, they blow their noses on “Kleenex” and when they need to write a short note that can be easily removed, they use a “Post-it”.

There are now many producers of copy machines, face tissues and sticky notes, but the first brands still stick in the minds of consumers.  Even though they may not be perfect, the winners are almost always the ones that distinguish themselves first.

* Buzz Aldrin, Sham and someone so unacknowledged that I can't even find their name!

Comments

[Surinder]

Hi Katie,

Really?

- Many people think Volvo created the airbag but in fact Audi did

- Google was late to the search game (and yet has grown faster than any company in history)

I think it takes a combination of first mover advantage as you suggest, but also continuous innovation to meet an audacious goal (everyone but Google thought Alta Vista was a good as search could get), and effective marketing (Volvo persuaded the world they were synonymous with safety).

If an initial innovation is crap, you need to earn the right to have someone spend the time to revisit a later version. The early version of the lastminute.com website was poor, but it was novel enough that people kept returning, during which time they improved it sufficiently. Google Reader went through a similar experience.

If you release early and don't innovate, you can soon be as good as dead - look at the performance of friendster, friends reunited and facebook.

I appreciate alot of these examples are online but that's increasingly the direction of things. Just as kids are digital natives and everyone older is merely an immigrant, so a similar thing applies to companies that have yet to appreciate the speed and innovation of the online world.

[Phil Darby]

As Surinder suggests, its not about being the first to market, but what you do with the advantage that gives you.

The business world is littered with businesses who failed to leverage ideas that others later made "their own". Microsoft aren't pioneers for instance, but have achieved omnipotence by putting their resources behind ideas that others have come up with, but have failed to exploit.

When I launch businesses and/or products with my clients we spend a great deal of time working out how we can protect against threats, the biggest of which is that a competitor will learn from your early mistakes, take your idea and do it better than you.