The Dynamism of Business Transformation: Digitization Photography and Photo Printing

This book uncovers the dynamics behind the transformation of an industry threatened by disruptive innovation. In contrast to existing research that focuses on the disruptive aspects of innovation, this book is unique in the following two aspects: It focuses on incumbent firms whose position would be undermined by new entrants; and it captures the process and causal link of the entire change of an industry as a synthesized result of multiple entities’ action. To reveal the nature of the dynamism of the industry's self-renewal, which cannot be fully captured by simplistic models, the book makes full use of historical process analysis, drawing on a variety of sources and in-depth interviews. Through this analysis, the reader can understand the threats of innovation that the Japanese photographic printing industry faced and how it responded to those threats and paved the way for its survival. Hints are provided for companies and their employees to think deeply about how they should deal with innovation — a double-edged sword that can bring success, but one that also may be feared because it can kill the business of those companies.