innovator's dilemma
innovator's dilemma proper noun: the observation that well-established companies tend to concentrate on improving existing products, leaving them vulnerable to new competitors and disruptive technologies.
Proper noun
the innovator's dilemma
- The observation that well-established companies tend to concentrate on improving existing products, leaving them vulnerable to new competitors and disruptive technologies.
- Some of the best pre-mortems for Steve Ballmer, out-going CEO of Microsoft, have chalked up the company's problem to the "innovator's dilemma."2013 August 28, Derek Thompson, “How Goliaths Beat Themselves: Microsoft's Mobile Failure and the Innovator's Dilemma”, in The Atlantic
- The generous reading of all this is that recent films and their creators became victims, essentially, of the innovator's dilemma: They got too good at obeying their own, once-successful formulas—and failed to see beyond them.2014 July 9, Megan Garber, “When Harry Met eHarmony”, in The Atlantic
Origin of innovator's dilemma
Described in the 1997 book The Innovator's Dilemma by American business consultant Clayton Christensen.
Questions about innovator's dilemma
- What does innovator's dilemma mean?
- Innovator's dilemma means the observation that well-established companies tend to concentrate on improving existing products, leaving them vulnerable to new competitors and disruptive technologies.
- What part of speech is innovator's dilemma?
- Innovator's dilemma is a proper noun.
Words near innovator's dilemma in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: innovator's dilemma (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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