BIG IN JAPAN（注1）

Nearly all of the technologies that drove Japan's stunning economic growth through the 1960s and 1970s were disruptive relative to the dominant American and European manufacturers. For example, Japanese steel companies began exporting inexpensive steel targeted at the lowest qualitytiers of the American steel market in the early 1960s. As the Japanese captured these markets and drove the prices of their products down, Western steel makers simply exited those tiers of the market to focus instead where profit margins were higher. To improve their own margins, the Japanese steel makers then pursued the Americans into the higher tiers of the market. Today, Japanese companies such as Nippon Steel, Nippon Kokkan, and Kobe Steel are among the world's largest high-quality steel producers.

In similar fashion, Toyota attacked the lowest tiers of the North American automobile market inthe 1960s with its Corona model. Over time, this strategy created new growth markets. The cars were so simple and ultimately so reliable that they became second cars in the garages of middle income Americans. This track worked until Toyota encountered competition in this tier from other Japanese companies such as Datsun (Nissan), Honda, and Mazda. To maintain its profit margins, Toyota then introduced models targeted at more demanding consumers -- first the Corolla and the Tercel, then the Camry, the 4Runner, and the Lexus, and finally the Avalon line. Honda and Nissan have followed Toyota in this upmarket march. From the small manufacturers of the cheap Japanese imports of the 1960s, these firms have grown into huge global corporations that make some of the highest-quality automobiles in the world.

Another good example is the Sony transistor radio. In the 1950s, Sony's battery-powered pocket radio was one of the world's first applications for the transistor, which was then a disruptive technology relative to the vacuum tube. The sound produced by these cheap radios was tinny and static-laced, but Sony's customers -- teenagers who could listen to rock-and-roll out of the earshot of their parents for the first time --did not care. Within a few years, Sony and its Japanese competitors had driven American radio producers (who relied on vacuum tubes fortheir larger, higher-quality products) from the market. Sony disrupted the television market in the same way, starting with a cheap, portable black-and-white model and ending up with its Trinitron. Japan later followed the same tactic in the video-recording and home-sound-system markets. Far from the days when the "Made in Japan" label was considered an epithet, Sony, Matsushita, and Sharp are today among the largest makers of high-quality consumer electronics products in theworld.

Over and over again, Japanese companies succeeded with this approach. But disruptive technologies also set their own trap. These very firms are now stuck at the high end of their own markets, paralyzed by the four practices of good management cited above. Their best customers are now the most sophisticated and demanding ones, with needs that cannot be served with just another round of disruptive products. The firms' skills at careful planning are legendary, enabling them to compete better in established markets, but they now work against aggressively creating new markets. Their profit margins now can be hurt only if they attempt to move back downmarket. And the most successful of these companies --Toyota, Nippon Steel, Sony, Canon, andMatsushita -- have grown to join the ranks of the world's largest corporations. They can no longer meet their needs for growth with the kind of modest revenues offered by the first transistor radios, portable televisions, tabletop copiers, and compact cars.

Again, Sony is a good example. Between 1950 and 1979, it introduced nine significant disruptive technologies, including pocket radios, portable televisions, consumer video cameras, and the Walkman. Because of their affordability and simplicity, these products allowed ordinary people to do things that previously had been limited to experts or the wealthy. But since 1979, Sony has not created a single new growth market of this genre. The company has adopted a strategy that is very different from the one that led to the dynamic growth of its first 30 years. Even though it now offers technologically innovative products such as its Playstation and the Vaio line of notebook computers, they are sustaining innovations, not market-creating disruptive ones.

Until the late 1970s, Sony's product-launch decisions were strongly guided by its chief executive officer, Akio Morita, who followed his intuition rather than conducting careful market research to unearth the potential for new products. But as the company became huge and successful in the 1980s, it had to hone its good management practices in market research, planning, budgeting, and resource allocation. These careful, rational processes, which are crucial to an established company's efficient operation, prevented one of history's most successful "serial disrupters" fromsucceeding at new market creation.

That said, Sony is exceptional in that it created new market after new market for 30 years before it succumbed to rational management. Most other companies, such as Toyota, Honda, and Canon, created markets only once. Once they secured their initial beachhead, they became fully engaged in exploiting the opportunity they had created and moved aggressively upmarket.

注1：（称霸日本，早先一个英国朋克乐队的名字，也是一首歌的名字，有兴趣的可以听听：http://www.musictea.com/music/play_7876_100530.htm）