Stockholm School of Economics

Will & Vision

How Latecomers Grow to Dominate Markets
Gerard Tellis,
Peter Golder

The revolutionary study that debunks the myth of pioneering advantage and reveals the real drivers of enduring market leadership.

Gillette entered the safety razor market decades after it began but has dominated it ever since.
Microsoft dominates many markets but has pioneered none.
Amazon is the dominant but not the first Internet bookseller.

These examples and dozens more like them prove that, contrary to popular wisdom, being first to market guarantees nothing-not name recognition, not market share, and certainly not long-term market leadership. The extensively researched and thoroughly readable Will & Vision discovers five key principles that are the true drivers of enduring market leadership:

Vision of the mass market
Managerial persistence
Relentless innovation
Financial commitment
Asset leverage

Influential business professors Gerard Tellis and Peter Golder draw powerful and surprising conclusions from their years of in-depth research on market entry and new product markets. Case studies of market leaders including Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Federal Express, Procter & Gamble, and Charles Schwab-along with analyses of archival reports written as close as possible to when events actually occurred-show how the five key drivers have remained remarkably similar from the nineteenth century to today. The authors contrast the behavior of firms that endured as leaders with those that had as good a chance or a better chance to do the same.

And-most important-they show how firms today can follow the examples of long-term market leaders to seize substantially greater market share regardless of the cost or complexity of their products.
Based on over a decade of in-depth research- drawn from hundreds of books and thousands of articles-Will & Vision presents an unbiased portrait of the true causes of enduring market leadership. And whether for photographic paper in the nineteenth century or online stock trading in the twenty-first, the answers it provides are surprising, historically substantiated, and thoroughly convincing.

About authors

Gerard J. Telus, PH.D., is the Jerry and Nancy Neely Chair of American Enterprise at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California. Dr. Tellis has published many award-winning articles in leading research journals, and he is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Marketing Research and Marketing Science.

Peter N. Golder, PH.D., is an associate professor at the Stern School of Business, New York University. Dr. Golder has published in the top scholarly journals, has won three best-paper awards, and has had several of his studies featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and Advertising Age.

References

"If investors and e-entrepreneurs had understood the lessons highlighted by Tellis and Golder, billions of dollars and years of torment could have been saved. Executives who don't understand these lessons will end up on the scrap heap of history."

Grant Freeland, Vice-President, The Boston Consulting Group

"Will and Vision identifies what makes for enduring market leadership. Later market entrants, take heart."

Philip Kotler , Professor, Kellogg Graduate School Of Management, Northwestern University

"Rare research-based insight shows that winners will be those executives that can understand when and how to apply the power of vision and will. A must-read for strategists who want to achieve enduring market leadership."

David Aaker, Vice-Chairman, Prophet Brand Strategy And Author Of Managing Brand Equity And Building Strong Brands