The Importance of Positioning in Disruptive Innovation

LINK TO ESSAY:

Google isn’t facing the Innovator’s Dilemma; it’s just so deeply Positioned in search that it’s been a sitting duck for the first superior technology or business model strong enough to take it on. 

Positioning is the flip side of one of Hamilton Helmer’s 7 Powers, counter-positioning: “​​A newcomer adopts a new, superior business model which the incumbent does not mimic due to anticipated damage to their existing business.” As Helmer points out in the book, counter-positioning is distinct from disruptive innovation. 

Similarly, Positioning is distinct from the Innovator’s Dilemma. We can define Positioning as: “An incumbent is susceptible to a new, superior business model due to anticipated damage to their existing business.” The goal of this essay is to provide a framework – Positioning – that we can all lazily reach for any time an impressive new technology or business model threatens an established incumbent (and many more situations, from the personal to the national, besides) without tripping any technical definitions.