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BMW vs. Tesla: a real live innovator’s dilemma

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This post was also published on TechCrunch. Jill Lepore genereated quite a fracas in Silicon Valley with her New Yorker article that questions disruptive innovation and posits that large incumbent companies often survive and subsume disruptive technology with small incremental gains. Fortunately, we have a live Petri dish: BMW’s new electric i3 is an ongoing case study of a legacy manufacturer facing an innovator’s dilemma in the face of Tesla , a very aggressive new competitor with next-generation technology. Elon Musk has defined the standard for a future mass-produced electric car – it must cost around $40,000, have a range of 200 miles, and be comparable to a BMW 3 series . In order to achieve that audacious goal, Tesla is embarking on a plan to build a “Gigafactory” capable of producing batteries at an efficient and lower cost that would make such a dream car feasible. Investors are betting that Tesla will be able to dominate the electric car market when it achieves scale,