George Stalk Jr.

“TI hammered its competitors in diodes and transistors, moved on to prevail in semiconductors, and ultimately in hand-held calculators and digital watches. Later, however, the management of TI encountered severe competitive problems in its watch and calculator businesses. Overreliance on experience-curve-based strategies at the expense of market-driven strategies is often cited as the underlying flaw in TI’s approach. This is an oversimplification. TI’s determined effort to drive costs down allowed no room for product-line proliferation. That single-minded focus created an opening for hard-pressed competitors such as Casio and Hewlett-Packard to sell on features rather than on price—a strategy that eventually became the standard for the industry when costs and prices declined to the point that consumers cared more for function and style than for price.”
― George Stalk Jr., Competing Against Time: How Time-Based Competition is Reshaping Global Mar

“Timely execution is very demanding. The process of bringing an innovation to market is complex and harbors many unknowns. An innovation must often successfully defeat a thousand enemies—inside as well as outside of the enterprise—to become a reality. Once the innovation is in the market, continued effective execution is critical. The first company to move with the strongest innovation often reaps the greatest reward. But to retain the advantage, the innovator must prevail with the second innovation as well as with the third. Failure to accomplish this means risking all.”
― George Stalk Jr., Competing Against Time: How Time-Based Competition is Reshaping Global Mar