Technological Inflection Points Level the Field

“TI’s breakthrough in silicon transistors immediately redrew the map of the semiconductor market. Before that, TI was an obscure small company; after that, TI soared and dominated the semiconductor industry for more than twenty years. TI’s breakthrough also had a deeper meaning: it established a model for countless small technology companies thereafter—that it is possible for the small to take on the big, and that the small have a chance to succeed against the big.”

“Of course, in earlier business history there were quite a few successful examples of “the small taking on the big,” but those successes were achieved only after long struggles, and most were cases where big companies made serious mistakes that gave small companies opportunities. TI’s large competitors, however, had not made serious mistakes, yet TI surpassed them in only a few short years. Why was this? Ultimately, the pace of technological progress clearly accelerated after World War II, and “technological inflection points” emerged one after another. When each “technological inflection point” appears, big companies are not necessarily stronger than small ones; small and big companies have almost equal opportunities. Over the past decades, cases of small companies outperforming big companies have become too numerous to count. The most famous example in the past ten-plus years is Microsoft beating IBM. But as far as I know, TI established the earliest model.”