Time to Market

This article discusses the concept of time to market and analyzes the potential innovation in terms of being a first mover, early follower, or late entrant. It explores the advantages and disadvantages of entering the market at a particular time and provides successful and unsuccessful examples in each case. The factors leading to success or failure are also discussed, along with recommendations for CEOs on timing the release of innovations.

Time to Market

Analysing the Potential Innovation
The potential innovations will enter market as the First Mover, Early Follower and the Late
entrant respectively. The first innovation is predicted to have a low to medium amount of
certainty that the customers will prefer. Since the second innovation is an early follower it can be
predicted that it will have a medium amount of customer preferences, while the third innovation
as a late entry is already known to garner a significant amount of preference from the customer.
Hie the first innovations has a lot of improvements from their previous versions the other two do
not. The third innovation has a high dependency on technological maturity and availability of
complementary goods and he ability to accelerate the market acceptance of products that are
related to this particular innovation.
Advantages and disadvantages of entering the market at this particular time
As a first mover the innovation will have a fresh demand and limited competition which will be
advantages but as a first mover the potential of the first innovation has not yet been tested and
thus there is no guarantee of its success. Being an early follower there is some idea about what
direction the innovation might take and thus marketing can be conducted accordingly
(Christensen, Raynor & McDonald, 2015). This will be an advantage. But there are high chances
of stiff competition because their an early mover that is in competition and has already gathered
significant market curiosity. Being a late entrant there is a guarantee that the market of this
particular innovation has a lot of potential which has been tried and tested. This will be an
advantage but there is already a lot of competition in the segment who have already garnered
market attention and thus promotional activity will have to be to the point.
Successful examples of all the cases
● Coca Cola is a successful first mover (Klingebiel & Joseph, 2016)
● Facebook can be considered as one of the successful early followers
● Apple Inc. is a perfect example of a successful late entrant.
Unsuccessful examples of all the cases
● Myspace is and example of an unsuccessful first mover
● Google + is an unsuccessful example of an early flower.
● Nokia Smartphones can be considered as an unsuccessful late entrant

Factors leading to success or failure in all cases.
While Coca cola was a first mover it appealed to the emotions of the consumer with a great
promotional strategy, Facebook as an early mover vigorously updated their features according to
the trends that users followed while Myspace which belonged to the same segment failed to do
(Wu, Wang, Hong, Piperopoulos, & Zhuo, 2016) so. Apple as a late entrants success as it
restructured the innovation on which it based their products while Nokia failed to do so.
Recommendation to the CEO
Technological innovations in the industry pave the way from new products that revolutionize and
restructure the market technological innovation reshapes civilization if marketed properly and
thus it is essential to carefully consider the timing of the release of such an innovation. It is
necessary to consider the innovations potential, chances of competition and critical appreciation
of the products that will be generated as a result of this innovation. Thus the CEO might have to
get a clear idea on where these innovations stand.
Justification of the belief
The third innovation has a high dependency on technological maturity and availability of
complementary goods and he ability to accelerate the market acceptance of products that are
related to this particular innovation. Apple Inc. is a perfect example of a successful late entrant.
Apple as a late entrants success as it restructured the innovation on which it based their products
while Nokia failed to do so (Outterson, et al. 2016). Thus it is essential to note that the third
innovation has the potential to change the structure of the current segment in the market and has
to promoted properly in order to achieve success.

References
Christensen, C. M., Raynor, M. E., & McDonald, R. (2015). What is disruptive innovation.
Harvard Business Review, 93(12), 44-53. Retrieved from http://pedrotrillo.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/01/Whatisdisruptiveinnovation.pdf
Klingebiel, R., & Joseph, J. (2016). Entry timing and innovation strategy in feature phones.
Strategic Management Journal, 37(6), 1002-1020. Retrieved from
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3cc4/b72e870be0940ed029cac552786f84087672.pdf
Outterson, K., Rex, J. H., Jinks, T., Jackson, P., Hallinan, J., Karp, S., ... & Dixon, D. M. (2016).
Accelerating global innovation to address antibacterial resistance: introducing CARB-X.
Nat Rev Drug Discov, 15(9), 589-90. Retrieved from
https://carb-x.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/2016_07_29_Nature_Review_Acceleratin
g_Global_Innovation.pdf
Wu, J., Wang, C., Hong, J., Piperopoulos, P., & Zhuo, S. (2016). Internationalization and
innovation performance of emerging market enterprises: The role of host-country
institutional development. Journal of World Business, 51(2), 251-263. Retrieved from
http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/88345/2/Wu%20Wang%20Hong%20Piperopoulos
%20Zhuo%20JWB%20%28pre-print%20version%29.pdf