I love reading stories about the disruptive technology of the 19th/early 20th century. The advent of refrigeration was another one that was fascinating and transformative.
People like to crap on marketers but to overcome status quo bias you need persuasion and emotion not just cold pragmatic utility. The tandem of Jobs and Wozniak comes to mind.
One angle from this story that jumps out at me is how it was Reuter that spotted the superior technology to the one he was already selling, and fully embraced it. It's actually far more common for incumbents to throw shade on the newer disruptive technology. Another example of a tech company that disrupted themselves when a better technology emerged was Netflix (realizing streaming was going to beat DVD by mail). Netflix disrupted themselves with streaming despite it offering a far smaller catalog of content.
Counter examples are far more numerous, such as Intel and Microsoft not realizing that smartphones were going to replace PCs. Kodak… Blockbuster… Xerox (they invented the GUI, mouse, and so much and sat on it)… HP (Wozniak offered them the Apple I, they passed)…
I love reading stories about the disruptive technology of the 19th/early 20th century. The advent of refrigeration was another one that was fascinating and transformative.
People like to crap on marketers but to overcome status quo bias you need persuasion and emotion not just cold pragmatic utility. The tandem of Jobs and Wozniak comes to mind.
One angle from this story that jumps out at me is how it was Reuter that spotted the superior technology to the one he was already selling, and fully embraced it. It's actually far more common for incumbents to throw shade on the newer disruptive technology. Another example of a tech company that disrupted themselves when a better technology emerged was Netflix (realizing streaming was going to beat DVD by mail). Netflix disrupted themselves with streaming despite it offering a far smaller catalog of content.
Counter examples are far more numerous, such as Intel and Microsoft not realizing that smartphones were going to replace PCs. Kodak… Blockbuster… Xerox (they invented the GUI, mouse, and so much and sat on it)… HP (Wozniak offered them the Apple I, they passed)…
That's very true. That said, Reuter's operation was rather modest in the days when he was adopting the telegraph.
Good point, maybe he saw it as a more scalable solution, similar to Netflix's streaming pivot.