New Markets: Developing Customers Before Products

Sustained Profitability in today's fast-changing high-tech industrial markets can be elusive. Confident that a new technological break-through will have customers clamoring at the door, managers often make major investments only to discover there is no real demand for their product. And even if the new product is a market hit, earnings can be short-lived. Competitors will soon pile in, prices will drop, and eventually the entire market will be wiped out by the next technological breakthrough. Only the earliest movers - both into new markets and out of fading ones - are likely to reap profits.

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