There are two ways to dethrone a winning product.
Target a smaller audience and build a better product, or
Target the same audience as the winner, and build a better product for the large audience
Option 1
A winning product is such because it’s the best solution, for those customers, at that point in time. There can be a smaller market using the winning product that desire, deserve, or demand a better solution. There’s something that they need, that they’re not getting from the winning product.
Example: Screen designers frustrated by the price and complexity of Adobe Illustrator would eventually pick up Sketch and Figma to better serve their needs.
Technology startups are familiar with dethroning via option one. Using this concept, they pick a small segment of a big market and build a product that will dominate the small market. Uber started small with black car transportation. Airbnb started with couch surfers.
Option 2
Option two requires a strong existing audience. Disney launched Disney Plus to topple Netflix. Disney, with a strong brand and fanbase, also had fan networks in Marvel and Star Wars, which helped to bootstrap their initial audience.
Google built the Microsoft Office suite and put it online. It didn’t mean Excel wasn’t still a winning product for accountants, but for some folks, they’d rather have their Slides (PowerPoint in Microsoft’s world) accessible via their web browser.
Using this framing, we can start to see why acquisitions are so potent. Facebook was on the brink of getting toppled by other social networks. They bought Instagram (which used a single primitive, the image), the best way to socially share a photo taken on your phone. They defended their throne again with WhatsApp, the best way to send a text message globally.
This could be why it’s difficult for large corporations to innovate internally. To avoid being toppled, a corporation might have to build a product that takes customers away from the flagship. Not build another product for them to buy and use.
If you’re on the throne, you can leverage your audience, topple someone else and build a better product for your customers. Or, you can start small.