When the market is mature, there will be a lot of competitors. Incremental/evolutionary change therefore doesn't reap big rewards.
If you want the big rewards, you've got to identify a new and radically better way to let the customers achieve whatever it is they're trying to do (in service of which they're buying the products currently on the market). Then you get to invent a new product category that is so obviously useful to people that they'll pay big bucks for it.
(Random anecdote: last week I was on a trans-Atlantic flight. (Premium economy, not economy.) Looking left: guy in the seat to my left had an iPad. Looking at my own lap: an iPad. Looking to my right: another iPad. I reckon of the 7 seats in my row, 4 or more were occupied by travellers with iPads. The iPad might not be a Mac/Windows/Ubuntu PC replacement, but as a gizmo for keeping the long-haul traveller entertained in flight it rocks. But if you'd asked most of those travellers what they wanted for flying a couple of years ago, they'd probably have said "a laptop with a longer battery life".)
If you want the big rewards, you've got to identify a new and radically better way to let the customers achieve whatever it is they're trying to do (in service of which they're buying the products currently on the market). Then you get to invent a new product category that is so obviously useful to people that they'll pay big bucks for it.
(Random anecdote: last week I was on a trans-Atlantic flight. (Premium economy, not economy.) Looking left: guy in the seat to my left had an iPad. Looking at my own lap: an iPad. Looking to my right: another iPad. I reckon of the 7 seats in my row, 4 or more were occupied by travellers with iPads. The iPad might not be a Mac/Windows/Ubuntu PC replacement, but as a gizmo for keeping the long-haul traveller entertained in flight it rocks. But if you'd asked most of those travellers what they wanted for flying a couple of years ago, they'd probably have said "a laptop with a longer battery life".)