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? What might “competing against nonconsumption” entail in the context of Firefox and the Mozilla project? What is the value network for Firefox and the Mozilla project, and how does it overlap with the value network for IE and Microsoft? Are the Mozilla project and Firefox potentially vulnerable to a co-optation strategy by Microsoft, as Netscape was? ...