Introduction
Innovation is a key factor in industry growth. Innovators can dominate competitors and new markets. In the article “Blue Ocean or Fast Second Innovation? A Four Breakthrough Model to Explain Successful Market Domination”, Buisson and Siberzahn (2010) highlight how the theories of the first mover and fast second are recognized as the primary approaches to achieving innovation and domination in the market space. Buisson and Siberzahn (2010), insist that neither of these two theories can fully account for market domination and offer research and a comprehensive literature review that to suggest and explain the assertion that market domination is achieved by using four types of breakthroughs either concurrently or separately.
The Problem With The Fast Second Approach After highlighting the perceived holes in the first mover theory, Buisson and Siberzahn (2010) take issue with the fast second approach. The fast second approach to market domination suggests that companies be the second entrant into newly created markets and colonize it to gain the advantage over pioneer first movers. Buisson and Siberzahn (2010) offer several contrasting examples of pioneers verse colonisator including; Ampex’s loss of the VCR market to JVC and Sony, Triumph, and Harley-Davidson being overtaken in the motorcycle market by Japanese producers such as Honda, and CompuServe losing the messaging market space to AOL. Each of these examples shows that secondary entrants to the market space can overtake pioneers that are first movers.
As with first mover, Buisson and Siberzahn (2010) identify two major issues within the fast second approach. First, the authors note that many pioneer first movers will never be overtaken in the market. To support this assertion, the authors provide examples of the Nespresso home espresso machine, Southwest Airlines, and RealNetworks Internet as examples of market leaders who have maintained their dominance in spite of fast second movers. Secondly, Buisson and Siberzahn (2010) highlight the major difficulty the associated with being a fast follower is the passive nature of companies that pursue this