Sustaining Innovation Failure of Walkman

Upon the sale of 400 million Walkman music players, what happened to it? Why did the Walkman become obsolete? Both successes and failures of innovations are not magical. Innovations are like spaceships. They need bursts of thrusts around innovative features to remain on course–to keep getting deeper into the market. It’s not a magical show. There are underlying patterns. For example, sustaining Innovation failure of Walkman offers us a pattern that innovations need thrust from bursts of innovative features at the point of discontinuities. In the absence of it, even magical innovations like Walkman fail to sustain, as entrants take advantage of it by releasing innovation with a burst of innovative features. For Walkman, it was Apple’s iPod–an MP3 player.

In 1979, Walkman emerged in the innovation space as a big bang. Upon its release, Sony ran out of its entire stock of 30,000 within the first three months. It also maintained a strong position in the portable music player market with its Walkman for over 20 years. However, at the dawn of the 21st century, it disappeared from the scene. Does it mean that customers are no longer interested in listening to music through portable devices? Or, is it due to the fact that Sony failed to keep giving thrusts with a burst of innovative features to sustain the Walkman in the market? In retrospect, it appears to be the sustaining innovation failure of Walkman. 

It does not matter how great the idea and the market’s initial response are; any innovation requires successive thrusts to stay on course. Through bursts of innovative features, innovations get the required thrust to stay on course to get deeper into the market. In its absence, the innovative product keeps drifting downward, and subsequently, competing innovations start taking its place. Hence, Walkman is no exception.  

Key takeaways of Sony’s failure to sustain Walkman’s success

• Walkman’s success- sales record of 400 million units led Walkman to brand Sony as an innovation icon.
• Sony’s success in changing the technology core–Sony succeeded in giving a 2nd life to the Walkman by changing the cassette tape technology coe with CD ROM.
• Sony failed to sustain Walkman in the Internet and digital era–although Sony adopted MP3, Sony failed to develop technology for high-speed downloading of music from online stores and offer a suitable user interface for easing the complexity of music selection.
• Apple’s iPod disrupted Sony’s Walkman success–with higher downloading speed, iTunes online music stores, and an aesthetically pleasant user interface for a convenient selection of favorite music, Apple’s iPod unleashed disruptive effects on Sony’s age-old success of Walkman.

Underlying causes of sustaining innovation failure of Walkman

The purpose of any innovative product is to help customers to serve their purposes at a decreasing cost. Sony used its Walkman to empower music lovers to get music-enjoying jobs done better—particularly while they were moving. The miniaturization of electronics and the availability of magnetic cassette tape created the opportunity to enjoy music better. Hence, customers showed a high response to Sony’s Walkman innovation. However, like many other innovations, Walkman also faced a response from the competition—mostly in the form of imitation. Sony, with brand’s value and edge in electronics, managed to maintain its market position.    

The advent of CD as a replacement for cassette tape offered a better alternative technology core. It created a discontinuity in the portable music player innovation space. Subsequently, instead of being a victim, Sony took advantage of it and successfully released Walkman’s CD version for sustaining Walkman’s market position. 

The emergence of MP3 digital music format and flash storage created another discontinuity. Unlike in the past, Sony started showing signs of failure in taking advantage of it for sustaining Walkman. In retrospect, Sony’s sustaining innovation response was not even strong enough to withstand Korea’s MPMan. Furthermore, software-centric innovation opportunities have been challenges to Sony and also many incumbent innovators who emerged from electro-mechanical and electronics backgrounds.    

The growing popularity of the Internet and the option of downloading music to MP3 players emerged as a big discontinuity. For leveraging this megatrend, neither MPMan’s innovator SaeHan nor Sony showed a strong response with a burst of innovative features to sustain their innovations. Subsequently, it left a vacuum in the innovation space. Hence, desperate Apple took advantage of it and responded with iPod. In fact, iPod was a sustaining innovation response in the portable music industry that Sony was supposed to deliver.       

Is there a pattern in Sony’s sustaining innovation failure of Walkman? 

It’s not due to the fact that Sony did not have technology and fund for pursuing ideas. Sony had all of them. But Sony failed to foresee the megatrend. Subsequently, it failed to focus on creating a burst of innovative features in helping customers in serving their purposes increasingly better. Unlike CD or Cassette tape, flash or magnetic hard disk memory was offering increasing storage at decreasing cost to hold a growing number of songs. On the other hand, the Internet was offering to download them as and when needed. It was a golden opportunity to offer a burst of innovative features. 

Yes, Sony responded. Sony responded with the same Walkman features—particularly the user interface. The change in storage technology and MP3 music downloading features were new. But it was creating additional problems. Particularly, the selection of music from a large collection by incessantly pressing the button was a nightmare. On the other hand, to avail of this trend, music lovers needed a good online collection. The downloading speed of the player was also an issue. Moreover, a portable music player was growing as a fashion item. Unfortunately, Sony did not seriously embark on it for offering a possible best tool to music lovers. 

There has been an underlying pattern. Due to the progress of technologies and infrastructure, innovation opportunities keep emerging. Innovators must take advantage of them for sustaining innovation to stay on course for offering increasingly better tools. Thus, innovators must keep releasing successive better versions by leveraging those developments as a burst of innovative features. Like the way Sony failed, many innovators fail to monitor and forecast technologies, infrastructures, and customers’ preferences to sustain their innovations. Such failures also open opportunities for new entrants to get in. Hence, sustaining innovation failure of Walkman offers us a pattern.   

Detect and leverage megatrends for creating bursts of innovation features

For avoiding and leveraging sustaining innovation failure of incumbent producers, innovators should keep focusing on megatrends. Those megatrends are created around changes in technologies, infrastructure, and customers’ preferences. And most importantly, the nucleus of the megatrends keeps changing. Besides, even they keep changing in the same product. For example, in the mobile phone, in the early 1990s, the nucleus of those megatrends was around talk time, sizes, and weights of the handsets. In the mid-1990s, it changed to the aesthetic aspect of the design. The migration continued to have PDA-like features reaching to DSLR like and Augmented reality camera features. One of the challenges for sustaining innovation is to keep detecting, forecasting, and responding to these megatrends with a burst of innovative features. However, in order to create those bursts, technology, and idea management play a vital role. 

At least 3 to 5 years of foresight is a must for developing the necessary technology and idea base. Sometimes, innovators will not be able to offer sustaining innovation response with in-house technology core. In fact, acquiring technologies from the outside should be an integral strategy. Even Apple is not immune to this necessity for sustaining innovation needs of iPhone.   

Furthermore, the uprising of such megatrends also offers opportunities to start-ups or new entrants. The failure of incumbents to respond opens the opportunity for aspiring new entrants. For example, Apple took advantage of Sony’s sustaining innovation failure of Walkman. On the other hand, start-ups may also focus on developing technologies and ideas that innovators of incumbent products will likely require down the road to create innovative bursts for sustaining their innovations. For example, start-up Camerai became the target of acquisition for Apple for the purpose of creating a burst of innovative features around the camera module of the iPhone.