Wharton Chap 6.

Trying to market emerging technologies is difficult because you have a product or more likely just an idea, concept, or even prototype, but the uncertainty of future markets is a reality. The potential market is not known, and there is very little, if any marketing data with which to work. Competition is unknown and impossible to plan for. Within an organization there will be several conflicting ideas and projections about when or if the product will succeed and who will be buying it. Product acceptance and timing are complete unknowns. The best a firm can do is try and minimize the uncertainty about a product market and make an educated decision about potential competitors and what direction they are going.

Three approaches:

1. Diffusion and adoption: The rate at which a technology will be adopted by the target market, or any market for that matter.

2. Exploration and learning: Information and research put a firm in the best position to make correct decisions along the development and marketing of an emerging technology and give themselves a better chance at success.

3. Triangulation and insights: This has to do with a firm using any and all types of research and combining them to give them the best information possible to use for marketing and production/design decisions in an emerging market. Since the customer is rarely the one to be asking for specific products, it's up to the corporations to try and figure out what will be accepted. Using information from any sources available should triangulate and give them the proper direction.

The rate of adoption example using digital imaging is a great example of all the items mentioned previously. The big question for early producers of digital imaging was whether or not users would rather drop off film at a brick and mortar store than plug something into their PC? There was no way to properly answer that question difinitively, so those companies had to use all the information available to them and enter the market with the hopes of adoption. Not knowing who the early adopters might be (except they had to be people with PCs) was probably the biggest question mark of them all. PCs were not as popular or affordable as they are now, so looking back that is quite a big risk over an emerging technology today that requires PC interaction.

Most technologies appeal to a certain segment of the technology enthusiasts population. These folks love technology and will buy the latest and greatest products and be lead users for many emerging technologies. Much of the success of the technology depends on some acceptance by this group of users.

Lead users are some of the best sources of information and feedback on emerging technologies. These users are familiar with the technology and the pros and cons and are motivated because they will be the beneficiaries of the final product.

No data or forecast will accurately project an emerging market. As the author says on pg 148, the best a company can do is determine the market is large enough to warrant product development. One example of a technology that I believe failed to do this was satellite phones. This technology never really took off and has been only used by the very wealthy and the military for the most part. Satellite phones were direct competitors to land based cellular phones, and providers of satellite networks such as ICO Global Communications and Iridium failed to determine whether or not the size of the market, after competition with cellular phones, whether or not the market was large enough to warrant massive amounts of investment in designing and launching communication satellites. What hurt these companies the most was the acceleration of acceptance of land based cellular phones in the late 1990s'. As quoted in the Reuters news article dated 8.27.1999, Mark Roberts, a telecommunications analyst at First Union had this to say: "I'm not at all surprised," referring to ICO Global's Chapter 11 filing. "The areas of the world that are not covered by wireless telecommunications are shrinking very rapidly, so the target market for satellites is shrinking."

Satellite phone providers also failed to look at how wireless users would be using the devices, as well as the design of the devices themselves. The handheld devices cost around $3,000 and required much more power so the battery pack was significantly bulkier than cellular phones. With a $3000 pricetag, the target marker was rich executives. Failure to see that rich executives who just dropped $3000 on phone would likely want to use their phones in the office, car, and airplane was also a major oversight. Satellite phones need line of sight to the sky, so use is very limited.

The market for some form of wireless phone was obvious and potentially very large in the early and mid 90s as technology improved. However, had satellite phone providers used triangulation and continuous market exploration (specifically into cell competitors) they likely would have (or should have) seen the imminent failure of a great idea that had poor design, and superior competition.

Sources: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/1999/08/21478