Tuesday, April 19, 2005

The curious case of Swiss watchmakers

Swiss watchmakers invented the quartz watch, but it went against their paradigm of mechanical watches, so they ignored taking out a patent on it, and rejected the whole idea. They in fact went ahead and presented the technology in international watchmakers conferences as more of an academic exercise. It was then that others, like Japanese watchmakers Seiko, copied the designs and latched onto the technology. Within 10 years, the swiss watchmaking industry had gone down from 90% of their share in profits to 10%. Approximately 85% of the workforce in the Swiss watchmaking industry were laid off.

Moral of the story ? Be very careful when rejecting a new paradigm - it just might leave you behind.

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