Where Open Source Is Successful
This is a game of picking winners, so we begin this chapter with a definition of the playing field. Then we will look at the areas where open source has advantages and disadvantages, real or apparent.
2.1 Analytical Framework
This section looks at how technology is adopted, when, and by which organizations. Important issues are disruptive innovation, lock-in, and the type of adoptions.
2.1.1 Disruptive Innovations
In Clayton Christiansen’s book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, the argument is made that businesses are threatened by “ disruptive innovations,” which are new approaches that come up from under their radar. Ironically, the businesses that pay the most vulnerable to such threats, because the needs of those customers and channels are not well satisfied by the innovation in its early stages.
Familiar examples of disruptive technologies include the personal computer, which is an obvious success, and the electric vehicle, which has great potential but has not yet really broken out.
A large part of Christiansen’s book focuses on the history of specific products, such as steam shovels and disk drives , that offer detailed examples of successive cycles of disruption.
The disk drive story, for instance, is mostly one of smaller and less capable drives finding new functions, solving new sorts of problems, and then growing up to replace the larger, previous generation.
Disruptive innovations often take the form of being good enough as opposed to better at least as the incumbents see it. When a disruptive product is compared with existing choices there may be severe current Iimitations in some uses but the new product is much simpler and cheaper in a way that is important to some customers. This type of activity happens in industries where products are improving faster than customer needs. This is very common in technology