When the Leader follows - Lessons from Sailboat racing
Winning the battle for market leadership is at the heart of competitive strategy. Overtaking the market leader has often been termed “dethronement” in prior literature and is considered a key managerial objective ( Ferrier, Smith, & Grimm, 1999 ; Smith, Ferrier, & Grimm, 2001a ). Management scholars across different fields have shown that imitating leaders can be an effective way for followers to catch up with and surpass the leader ( Posen, Lee, & Yi, 2013 ). However, less attention has been given to the possibility of leaders imitating competitor moves and to the performance consequences of such a strategy. This is surprising, since leading firms do leverage imitation strategies in attempts to defend their leadership. For example, Apple, the market leader in smartphones for a number of years, imitated the moves made by Samsung in offering larger screens for iPhones two years after Apple’s chief executive officer (CEO) publicly stated that phones w...