What Are the Risks for Companies Moving into New Areas of Business Made Possible by Fast-Changing Technology?

The main worry for any business planning to enter a market that utilises technology which has a high rate of change would be that anything they invest in today would be outdated tomorrow. Apex is a typical example of a company that was around when the internet was an emerging technology.

The internet wasn’t the only new area that Marina was looking to explore. She also suggested producing menus for film productions published on the most common optical media at the time: the Compact Disc. With the benefit of hindsight one may think it would have been an excellent move for company such as Apex to grasp opportunities they had to enter the market for website design and also to start working with Video Compact Discs (which would’ve been good preparation for when the DVD came into existence). But the decision to move into these new areas of work is not so easy.

When a new market is created out of technological advancements there are two things a company can do: be the first to service the market hoping to grab an early customer base, or secondly they can enter the market later but with a product that is superior in some way. Marina believes that Apex would have a sufficient amount of interest in the new products that would come from existing customers. These customers would expect the same quality of product that they received in earlier dealings with Apex. Now if Apex were to try to become the early bird in web design as the internet developed, it is possible their product would not be up to scratch. So it seems clear to me that for Apex the best course of action would be to wait