Exploit or Be Exploited:  Five broad types of innovation contribute to the creation of customer value. Over the lifetime of a technology, the relative importance to customer value of each of the five types of innovation will shift as shown below. This shift requires vendors with early success to make deep changes in their business model and culture if they are to maintain that success throughout all three stages. Some make these difficult changes successfully (IBM under Lou Gerstner), while other’s don’t (Digital Equipment Corporation). Understanding this predictable innovation pattern is important to vendors if they are to exploit these changes as opposed to being exploited by them. Since the changes that need to take place are often deep (including culture), they are rarely easy or fast to accomplish. Find out more in our book Envisioning Business and our MIT Sloan Management Review article Shifting Cultural Gears in Technology Driven Industries.