There are four reasons why good managers become paralyzed when faced with disruptions. First, leading companies listen to their customers. Because disruptive technologies perform significantly worse than mainstream products in the beginning, the leading companies' most attractive customers typically will not use them. The more carefully companies listen to their best customers, therefore, the less they will recognize that the disruption is important. Second, such companies carefully measure the size of markets and their growth rates to understand their customers better. But disruptive technologies foster new products and services with a market impact that cannot be easily predicted. Third, good managers focus on investing where returns are the highest. Disruptive innovations, however, usually translate into cheaper products with lower profit margins. (It never made sense for IBM to market software in the 1970s -- because the profits from making hardware were so much greater.) Finally, leading companies almost always pursue large markets. As companies become successful and grow, their managers are compelled to rake in more revenue each year to maintain their growth rates and boost stock prices. But the emerging markets for disruptive innovations are much smaller at first than mainstream markets and cannot provide the huge volumes of new business that keep a large company growing.

优秀的经理人员在技术颠覆面前变得麻痹无力出于四个方面的原因。首先是因为领先企业都听从客户所需。因为颠覆性技术最初在性能表现方面与主流产品相比有相当大的差距，特别是那些最吸引人的客户并不愿意使用它们。企业越是悉心听取客户的需求，便越是容易忽略技术颠覆的重要性。其次，这些企业通常通过仔细测算市场规模及其增长率来更好地了解客户。而颠覆性技术孕育新的产品和服务，其市场影响力难以预测。第三，优秀经理人的投资重点集中于最高回报率。而颠覆性创新通常会转化为利润率较低的便宜的产品。（在十九世纪七十年代，IBM如果销售软件产品就没有任何意义——因为当时硬件产品带来的利润实在是丰厚多了。）最后，领先企业通常总是耕耘大规模的市场。当企业获得成功并持续增长时，经理们每年不得不加速撷取更多的利润以保持增长率并推动股价增长。但颠覆性创新创造的新兴市场最初比主流市场要小得多，不能提供保持庞大企业增长所需的巨大的新营业额。

（最近比较忙，进度慢了些——2006年4月4日记）