Executive Summary (This is a document excerpt)

IT products do not have a natural obsolescence. Thus, IT vendors must rely on innovation to periodically relaunch the hardware, software, and service markets. Both technology vendors and users constantly face the dilemma of funding or buying into an innovation without knowing its future. Studies on the economics of technological diffusion show that innovation adoption describes an S-shaped curve with two major inflection points: 1) the beginning of widespread market adoption, where sales take off, and 2) the beginning of market saturation, when market growth slows markedly. All successful IT innovations must satisfy four cascading criteria: 1) technological advantage; 2) economical advantage; 3) compatibility with vested interests; and 4) ability to encourage development of complementary elements. Additionally, the conventional wisdom about why and how innovations succeed is wrong. However, you can predict sales takeoff points by analyzing the evolution of the supply.

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