Big Winners and Big Losers: The 4 Secrets of Long-Term Business Success and Failure

Chapter 10. Rigidity

Big losers were not passive. They, too, moved (see Table 10.1), but often it was in the wrong direction, or their timing was off. Big losers moved because they had to in response to a threat. Their moves were defensive, not offensive. They moved without good knowledge of their customers. Big losers did not move toward positions where they could be more fully aligned with their customers' needs. It was a movement driven by products and technologies, not by markets. Figure ??? summarizes the lessons learned from big losers. For each lesson in Figure 10.1, I provide examples of the traits (Table 10.1) the big losers exhibited.

Table 10.1. Rigidity: The Movement of Losing Companies

Company	Rigidity
LSI Logic	Moves toward standard, ...