It takes insightful analysis of the key success factors from the customers' perspective while a strong commitment to re-orient internal, back-office systems to support customer-driven criterion. The examples of the e-commerce industry, which is known for increasing returns and being highly differentiated on knowledge, show how quickly the network effect can serve as an accelerator for second movers to gain customer base in a relatively short period of time.

References

Jeffrey H. Dyer, & Kentaro Nobeoka. (2000). Creating and managing a high-performance knowledge-sharing network: The Toyota case. Strategic Management Journal: Special Issue: Strategic Networks, 21(3), 345-367.

Hsieh, T.. (2010, June). Why I Sold Zappos. Inc., 32(5), 100-104.

Isckia, T.. (2009). Amazon's Evolving Ecosystem: A Cyber-bookstore and Application Service Provider. Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences, 26(4), 332-343.

Lieberman, M.B. & Montgomery D.B. 1998, 'First-Mover (Dis)Advantages: Retrospective and Link with the Resource-Based View, Strategic Management Journal, vol. 19, pp. 1111-1125.

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