Philosophy:Entrenched player's dilemma

The entrenched player's dilemma is a concept featured in Wikinomics. It is the choice faced by existing businesses in a changing marketplace. To embrace new ideas fully, they must abandon their current revenue streams.

Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams explain the concept:

"The problem with mature companies is that the very commercial success of their products increases their dependency on them. Making radical changes in the product's capabilities, underlying architecture or associated business models could cannibalize sales or lead to costly realignments of strategy and business infrastructure. It's as though popular and widely adopted products become ossified, hardened by the inherent incentives to build on their own success. The result is that entrenched industry players are generally not motivated to develop or deploy disruptive technologies."

See also

• Prisoner's dilemma