Is the First to Market the First to fail?: Empirical Evidence for Manufacturing Business.

While the empirical relationship between order of market entry and firm survival has not been established, conventional wisdom describes how the market pioneer faces the greatest market and technological uncertainty. Memorable phrases reflect the associated survival risk, such as "the first to market is the first to fail" and "pioneer is the one with the arrows in their back". To access survival risk in the face of both market and technological uncertainty, this study compares survival rates for 189 market pioneers versus 320 early followers.