This course utilizes an inquiry based approach to understanding sources of competitive advantages in companies and other organizations.
Module 6 Part 2
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Del curso dictado por University of New Mexico
Entrepreneurial Strategic Management
86 calificaciones
De la lección
Week 6
How can companies deal with disruptions in the marketplace? Part 2
Conoce a los instructores
Doug E Thomas, Ph.D.Professor
International Management, Anderson School of Management
So TV and radio products that emerged in the early 1900s,
again, were very disruptive of other industries.
And I'm sure there were many doubters and
critics that thought that the radio reproduction of some type of dramatic or
comedy performance was not as good as seeing it live.
Being there in the theater, and so,
it probably wasn't considered to be the same.
And to some degree you might believe that theater owners,
for live performances of plays or musicals to some degree,
ignored the invention of vacuum tubes and
the subsequent radios that used them and then TVs.
Think about the device itself, the radio or TV for a second.
What did they look like in the 1920s or 30s or 40s?
If you think about it, if you've seen pictures of them,
they're usually large pieces of furniture, really.
They're made out of wood and
were meant to be something that was important in the room,
usually a family or a sitting or a living room, we call them in English.
A place that family members would gather and
enjoy this entertainment in the comfort of their home.
And the piece of furniture, as I'm describing it, was meant to be pleasing
to the eye because it was going to be seen by everyone, and it was rather large.
One of the reasons it was rather large is because vacuum tube technology
involved a pretty big footprint.
It required some space.
And so televisions and
radios were both quite large compared to what we have today.
And where did you buy a TV or radio in the 1920s, 30s, or 40s, or even the 50s?
Well if you're familiar with that period of time, you'll probably be aware that
at the beginning, there were specialized TV and radio stores, electronic stores.
They were considered special equipment that required some training.
You couldn't just walk and with no help serve yourself,
so to speak, and just pick it up and leave.
You needed help.
You understanding the product.
You needed help in having someone describe how it worked, the purpose of it.
It was a brand new product.
You probably needed someone to deliver it to your home and install it, and
you certainly needed help in repairing it.
And so these specialty stores, they were involved in maintenance.
If the vacuum tube itself needed to be replaced,
they came to your home, and they performed that.
Or you had to have it taken in for them to do that.
And so owning a TV or radio was not quite as simple as it was today, and
the industry itself involved a particular distribution channel system behind it.
Now today, in today's world TV and
radio stores don't exist in the same way to the degree that they did in the past.
Now we have these, what we call big box stores in a lot of parts of the world,
electronics specialty stores.
We have online retailers.
And so, self service is a major part of our society in a way
that didn't exist in previous generations.
And so, the radio, in particular, is much larger than what we have today.
And when people first had the opportunity to listen to radio, they gathered around
this piece of furniture, and they enjoyed a dramatic narration of some story.
And they look to that time that they can enjoy together.
But you all had to come to the place that this large object sat.
Most people didn't have multiple radios in their homes, one in each room for sure,
because they were too large.
And so, this is how the industry or sector emerged and evolved.
And it was a very successful one, because
the technology really enabled people to do things they couldn't do before.
And the price of the products decreased as economies of scale set in in production.
And quality improved, and so the product went up, this
green line we've been looking at that you can see here, as it improved in quality.
Something interesting happened, though, in the 40s and 50s, 1940s and
1950s, and that is that a new technology emerged.
And that technology was known as, or is known as, transistor technology.
Now, again, I'm not an expert in explaining
solid state electronics by any means, but
the transistor was a major development in
reproduction of both audio and video.
And it allowed for reproduction of audio and video at a much lower cost,
but as a brand new technology in the 1940s and 50s, it was,
as I've said in that important phrase, it was not good enough.
And so as you can see on this slide, when transistor technology came out,
despite it's ability to produce audio or video to a user,
it wasn't good enough to match the quality of existing TVs or radios.
And so when the technology was invented and
commercialized, it was first adopted by a product
that really didn't exist to the same degree in the past.
And transistor technology was first used in hearing aids.
Now think about that for a minute, who uses hearing aids?
Well, usually it's people who have some trouble with sound, hearing,
and often that comes with age but not always.
There are lots of people who might have a need for a hearing aid.
If you tried to use vacuum tube technology in a hearing aid,
you'd come up against a lot of problems.
It'd be too large and require too much power to put on your ear.
I'm not exactly sure, to be frank with you,
exactly what existed in terms of hearing aids in the 1940s, but
transistor technology certainly brought a new
enjoyment to life for those who needed help with hearing.
And transistor technology was just good enough to produce sound or
audio to someone who wasn't able to consume sound before,
whether it be on a radio, or just listening to others speak.
And so those who invested in transistor technology didn't try to use it right
away in radios, because they knew that vacuum tube technology was much better.
If you tried to listen to a musical performance on a radio using vacuum tubes,
it just was much better quality than
the companies that would've tried to use transistors at the time.
And so, that's why we have hearing aids down here,
far below this red line of accepted performance.
Hearing aids was a whole new category and
those who produced radios weren't interested in producing hearing aids.
It was not something they were worried about and
it would have been very costly for them to suddenly invest in transistor technology.
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