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Ecological Niches 239

It required theoretical knowledge which they neither possessed nor
knew how to acquire. There were other publishers in Baedeker’s time,
but a guidebook that required on-the-spot gathering of an enormous
amount of detailed information, constant inspection, and a staff of
traveling auditors was not within their purview. “Counter-trade” is nei-
ther trading nor banking.
The business that establishes itself in a specialty skill niche is
therefore unlikely to be threatened by its customers or by its suppli-
ers. Neither of them really wants to get into something that is so alien
in skill and in temperament.
Thirdly, a business occupying a specialty skill niche must con-
stantly work on improving its own skill. It has to stay ahead. Indeed,
it has to make itself constantly obsolete. The automobile companies
in the early days used to complain that Delco in Dayton, and Bosch
in Stuttgart, were pushing them. They turned out lighting systems that
were far ahead of the ordinary automobile, ahead of what the auto-
mobile manufacturers of the times thought the customer needed,
wanted, or could pay for, ahead very often of what the automobile
manufacturer knew how to assemble.
While the specialty skill niche has unique advantages, it also has
severe limitations. One is that it inflicts tunnel-vision on its occu-
pants. In order to maintain themselves in their controlling position,
they have to learn to look neither right nor left, but directly ahead at
their narrow area, their specialized field. Airplane electronics were
not too different from automobile electronics in the early stages. Yet
the automobile electricians—Delco, Bosch, and Lucas—are not lead-
ers in airplane electronics. They did not even see the field and made
no attempt to get into it.
A second, serious limitation is that the occupant of a specialty
skill niche is usually dependent on somebody else to bring his prod-
uct or service to market. It becomes a component. The strength of the
automobile electrical firms is that the customer does not know that
they exist. But this is of course also their weakness. If the British
automobile industry goes down, so does Lucas. A. O. Smith pros-
pered making automotive frames until the energy crisis. Then
American automobile manufacturers began to switch to cars without
frames. These cars are substantially more expensive than cars with
frames, but they weigh less and therefore burn less fuel. A. O. Smith
could do nothing to reverse the adverse trend.
Finally, the greatest danger to the specialty niche manufacturer is