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What U.S. E-Commerce Can Learn from Its Global Copycats

Harvard Business Review

We were unable to capitalize on first mover advantage. But first mover advantage is a simplistic tenet of global strategy. Frustration came quickly when we couldn''t launch localized country sites or hire teams fast enough to stay in front of the international imitators. Once a copycat succeeds, U.S.

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Strategic Choices Need to Be Made Simultaneously, Not Sequentially

Harvard Business Review

It turned out that Uber’s How to Win had a lot to do with building a first-mover advantage in markets like the U.S.; when Uber was a late entrant, the Where to Play wasn’t a simple extension, and it exited after losing convincingly to first mover Didi.

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Strategy and The Uncertainty Excuse

Harvard Business Review

They may be strategizing their way to first mover advantages and positions that leave few if any attractive options in the market. The danger, of course, is that while we are using uncertainty as an excuse to put off making strategic choices, the competition may be doing something else entirely.

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Four Ideas for Creating Mobile Strategy

Harvard Business Review

In many markets around the world, companies have the chance to seize a first-mover advantage by investing early in this growing consumer touch point, much in the same way that companies that made early, scaled investments in TV advertising in its youngest years secured long-term cost advantages.

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The Hidden Costs of Initial Coin Offerings

Harvard Business Review

Those benefits fall into three categories: To jumpstart network effects that provide a first-mover advantage: Many of the projects being built using blockchain technology are “protocols” that govern the interactions between users in a decentralized autonomous network.

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Why Winner-Takes-All Thinking Doesn’t Apply to Silicon Valley

Harvard Business Review

In turn, the first mover experiences explosive growth and assumes a dominant market position while earning wonderful profits. At first people thought the market leaders would be wrapped up in a few years. But those positions proved vulnerable. End of story.

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Structure Your Global Team for Innovation

Harvard Business Review

To ensure first mover advantage, the schedule was extremely aggressive. These positions are desirable ones: Project managers value the opportunity to work closely with the senior executives assigned to their projects. Essilor undertook a project to develop photochromic lenses with partners PPG and Transitions Optical.