Overcoming the Incumbent Dilemma: The Dual Roles of Multimarket Contact During Disruption

Incumbents ignore nascent markets created by disruptive product innovations when previous industry and market experiences, ingrained in technology frames, leads them to characterize these innovations as unattractive to important customers and undervalue the growth opportunity. Competitors made salient through multimarket contact (MMC) may attenuate this incumbent dilemma if they enter the new market thereby signalling its value, or if an...