Innovations do not always lead to the increase of the competitive advantage, market share or profitability.
Using the Island Bridge model, when the second bridge is built, the traffic starts to distribute between the two bridge, so the revenue of the first bridge falls. The first bridge now has the pressure to innovate in order to attract more customers, one of the employee suggest that they replace all the traditional light bulb with the new LED lights, so that it will look cooler. In the meanwhile, the second bridge is not stopping as well, they performed a customer survey and found out that many customers do not like walking in the rain, so they install a shield on top of the bridge, so that Pedestrians can walk on the bridge without the need of an umbrella. The result is that more people are choosing the second bridge in lieu of the rain.
From this story, we can see, not all the innovation can help the product to gain a competitive advantage, only those innovation that can address the customer needs directly (new function, such a the shield) or indirectly (e.g. new processes to reduce the cost for cost sensitive product/service) will matter from a business prospective.
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