Rita Gunther McGrath takes issue with some of this thinking. In “Old
Habits Die Hard, but They Do Die,” she argues that although the theory
of cumulative advantage makes sense in industries that are predictable,
that condition no longer applies for many companies. Habits, like other
elements of the environment, can shift. Consider how Dollar Shave Club’s
subscription model snatched market share from Gillette. Executives,
McGrath says, must balance the power of cumulative advantage with the
need to refresh their approach. One tactic is to leverage an
organization’s core skills or capabilities, but in a new format—as
Dayton Hudson did when it became Target. The better executives become at
understanding the motivations behind unconscious choices, the more
likely they are to succeed at building habitual behavior among their
customers—and, just as important, the more likely they are to see how
those habits might change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]