Welcome to Advance Business strategy, Module One, Strategy over Time.
In this module we're gonna talk about the dynamics of competition.
We're gonna introduce the idea of the competitive life cycle.
We're gonna discuss how incumbent firms often
face hardship when they face new technologies that disrupt their markets.
And we're gonna discuss ways in which firms might deal with these disruptions
and analyze these disruptions that they might face.
I'd like to begin with a story of four iconic firms.
Firms that in their day were the most successful within their industry and
marketplace.
The first, Studebaker Brothers.
After the Civil War in the United States,
the Studebaker Brothers emerged as the premiere maker of horse drawn carriages.
At the height of their popularity,
they demanded a sixty percent market share within that market, and
then along came an innovation, the one depicted next to me here.
The horseless carriage, better known as the automobile.
Now in fact, the Studebaker brothers made the transition from horse-drawn
carriages to the automobile.
In the picture, we actually see the famous inventor Thomas Edison
sitting next to one of the Studebaker brothers in their new electric vehicle
that they had come to the market with.
In fact, the Studebaker brothers did sell automobiles for a number of years.
However they never had the same success that they had
in the horse drawn carriage market.
And eventually they went bankrupt and out of business.