Market leadership in technological twilight sleep

Unfortunately, it's not an isolated case: technology and market-leading companies have a risky tendency to rely on what brought them success in analog business. They soar high - and away from reality and true market realities. This paves the way for digital newcomers to come out of nowhere and hijack the market with digital innovations, thumbing their noses at long-established competitors. Convinced technological leadership sends companies into a pubescent frenzy of success that loosens their grip on the ground. And then comes the "hangover moment": The office is completely devastated. A chicken is cackling in the hallway and a tiger is sitting in the anteroom. This is reminiscent of the hungover men with a film tear in the US feature film "Hangover".

Market leaders are unfortunately quite susceptible to technological twilight sleep

Market leaders have fully absorbed and internalized the values and guidelines that have propelled them to this top position. The supposed recipe for success: continue to build on these compelling values. Even higher. Even faster. Even more efficient. Success acts like an anaesthetic, leading to a state of stupor. In a half-asleep state, market leaders perceive their environment only in a slightly muffled form. A bit like being wrapped in cotton wool. Companies deeply rooted in their success mindset underestimate and misjudge disruptive innovations and fail to recognize emerging trends, or do so too late. By the time the warning signals have worked their way through the cotton wool, it is too late for an adequate response. Disruption clearly and mercilessly aims at upheaval - within an entire market segment or an entire industry. Markets grow from nothing, over and over again, through the chutzpah and agility of entry-level companies. The established companies allow themselves to be taken by surprise, against their better judgment. They are fully focused on constantly improving their established technologies and values to stand out in the highly competitive market with differentiated solutions. At some point, however, a technology is so exhausted that the high development costs are not commensurate with the added value perceived by the customer. Or which private photographer really needs the usual 20 megapixels today? And that is the problem. The point has been reached where a disruptive big bang threatens. What floats on cloud nine can often no longer be perceived and appreciated by the customer. Those who act too far away from their customers will inevitably be thrown back onto the hard ground of facts at some point. The infamous "hangover moment" occurs. Some try to save themselves at the last second by migrating upwards in order to fish for premium customers in more profitable markets. There, however, they find themselves in a vacuum, with products that customers no longer want. Clayton M. Christensen first described this in his bestseller "The Innovator's Dilemma" (published by Harvard Business Press in 1997). Still today a fundamental work with high influence on management research and leadership practice.

The way back to the hello awake state

Smart market leaders rely on deafening bangs that are triggered by the customer. These jolt awake and sharpen the sense for the essential: the unique customer experience. After all, the invention can only be called successful when the market is excited, not (just) the developer. And this is one of the core problems of established market leaders: the directives come from the leadership (entrepreneur, manager), the (IT) engineer assembles the solution. Managers explicitly aim at complex solutions, which often turn out to be unrealistic. They don't notice that they miss the goal (in the penalty kick). After all, they have always been successful at what they do. The thinking highway sends its regards! Technicians and engineers, on the other hand, have little or no idea about customer needs. Often they are visionary and technology-loving, which is not necessarily congruent with the user-friendliness factor. In the agile working world, the bridge between management and the IT department is found in the model of design thinking. Admittedly - we are also wrongly serving clichés here. The design thinking process is borrowed in character and sequence from the step-by-step work process that designers intuitively follow. Teams move in iterative loops through five successive phases that build on each other: Understand - Observe - Define Perspective - Find Ideas - Develop and Test Prototypes. If you or your teams work in design thinking mode, approach complex problems systematically from the user's perspective and try to adopt the thinking and approach of designers. If we look at science and technology, we see that everything here revolves around the technical solvability of tasks. If we work in design thinking, we are centrally concerned with the user wishes and needs of the intended target groups and strictly orientate our innovations to the needs of the later users. We see ourselves as the first users of the new prototype, which provides initial insights into its applicability and should be tested in practice. This is where the new ideas and products are supposed to prove themselves. We have to pay particular attention to three essential components: technological feasibility, economic viability and, above all, acceptance by people. The rush to success, excessive faith in engineers and insufficient knowledge of the customer context lead to a dissonance between established market leaders and customers. Design Thinking is designed to bridge the dissonance between the ideas of the customer, the management and the (IT) engineers as well as to prevent "hangover moments".