How Springboard both invented and missed the smartphone market

Philippe MEDA -

As a quick end-of-the-year note, I was delighted by the 30 min documentary produced by The Verge on the smartphone early-stage market in the early nineties.

It is a fantastic template to understand quite a few things:

  • How inventors are rarely innovators.
  • Why early actors mostly can’t see the future of the market.
  • Why does corporate culture always wins in the end (and in that case make you lose everything)
  • Why overnight paradigm shifts are often 20 years in the making…

And, if you want to see a perfect analogy between this early smartphone market and the current state of the banking or automotive market… I won’t blame you.