The Mac Era and the G M Saturn Brand

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In the eighties g m was looking at japan, and they were losing everywhere. They couldn't make small cars. Labor costs were too high. The dealer experience was harweno. So when g m did as they did clay christianson before the book existed, which as they started a whole brand, they hired all different people. And it turns out like it's very, very hard to do that. Instead of costing billions of dollars, and they shut the whole thing down, is a failure.

In this re-run from September 2018, Benedict Evans and Steven Sinofsky talk all about Tesla — and more broadly, the nature of disruption overall. How disruptive is Tesla really, and what exactly are they disrupting — from the dashboard to car makers to vendors to energy source to autonomy overall?

The tech industry is littered with leading innovators... who nonetheless failed to be the dominant leader in the end. So the question should be, is this new thing fundamentally difficult for the incumbent to do, and how does it relate to market dominance? Which of these things are important in order for Tesla to be the new BMW or the new GM? Looking back at other examples historically (Microsoft, GM's Saturn Brand, and of course the iPhone), what kind of disruption matters most for market dominance? And what is the long view of how software is eating transportation?