Firefox

As I implied in my previous post, I don’t want to simply repeat all the great comments about Firefox 3 that everyone else is posting; better to read them in the original and not get them second-hand from me. But then I thought: instead of rehashing others’ posts, perhaps I can rehash my own? I’m quite fond of the theories of innovation created and popularized by Clayton Christensen, including his concept of “disruptive” innovations versus “sustaining” innovations, and have written a number of posts discussing those theories in the context of Mozilla and Firefox. What better occasion than the launch of Firefox 3 to write yet another? ...

In previous posts I discussed the basics of Clayton Christensen’s disruptive innovation theory and considered whether Firefox is a disruptive innovation. In this post I try to describe the ”value network” for Firefox, using Christensen’s definition: “[a firm’s] upstream suppliers; its downstream customers, retailers, and distributors; and its partners and ancillary industry players” (Seeing What’s Next, p. 63). I also discuss how the Firefox value network overlaps (or not) with the value networks of Microsoft and others. ...

In a previous post I discussed Clayton Christensen’s “disruptive innovation” theory (as popularized in The Innovator’s Dilemma and other books) and how it applied to the rise and fall of Netscape. In this post I turn to more recent events, and attempt to answer at least some of the five questions with which I ended previously: Is Firefox more of a sustaining innovation or a disruptive innovation? In what sense is the Mozilla project pursuing (or could pursue) disruptive strategies, whether based on low cost or competing against nonconsumption? ...