http://www.claytonchristensen.com/books/the-innovators-dilemma/Many of you may have read this book, with it's central thesis being in a nutshell
When big companies fail, it’s often not because they do something wrong but because they do everything right. Successful businesses, Christensen explained, are trained to focus on what he calls sustaining innovations—innovations at the profitable, high end of the market, making things incrementally bigger, more powerful, and more efficient. The problem is that this leaves companies vulnerable to the disruptive innovations that emerge in the murky, low-margin bottom of the market. And this is where the true revolutions occur, creating new markets and wreaking havoc within industries.
I wonder how applicable it is to the case of Bitcoin and the banking/payments industry. The banks are hugely profitable right now, and appear to be doing everything right to look after their wealthiest customers and profit handsomely from the high-end margin share of the market, e.g. govt. bonds. But are they ignoring the "disruptive innovations" that are occurring in the murky low-end of the market that will ultimately cause them to fail?
It seems it might be we have a textbook case example for the The Innovator's Dilemma happening right before our eyes. How long can the banks ignore Bitcoin before it will be too late for them to avoid failure by obsolescence, months, years, decades?
Which banks will be most likely to provide bitcoin services for their "low-end" market share first, small regionals, mega-banks, S&Ls?
Or will they all be too rule-bound by regulations and red-tape (much of which they crafted themselves to stifle competition) to even attempt incorporating bitcoin technology innovations into their systems?
