There are statistical artifacts here that need to properly be taken into account.
First, there is only ever one first mover and many fast followers. Thus, it's not entirely surprising that at least one fast follower would dominate the leader.
Secondly, the failure rate calculations are highly suspect due to historical redactionism. If a first mover fails, it will still be remembered due to it's contribution to the field. If a fast follower fails, it becomes hard to even discover that it existed in the first place.
Think of this in terms of car companies. Ford was the first mover but, up until the 1920's, there were almost a thousand different car companies started by various people: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_United_States_a... . 99% of them failed, some had moderate success and a few like Toyota & GM had enough outsized success to eventually beat Ford. Being a "fast follower" in this case almost always meant you were dead.
Ford was not the first car company in the USA. Daimler Motor Company beat it by over a decade.
He did not sell the first commercially successful gas powered automobile in the USA. Alexander Winton holds that honor.
Ford did not sell the first mass produced automobile in the USA. Ransom E. Olds did.
Ford wasn't even Henry Ford's first automobile company. The Detroit Automobile Company was. Ford was his third company.
The most common justifiable claim about how Ford was a first mover was the invention of the assembly line. Even so there is dispute. The concept was patented by Olds in 1902. According to Henry Ford, Ford's reinvention was based on William "Pa" Klann's observation of the meatpacking industry's "disassembly lines", which had been invented in 1867. However Ford certainly perfected it, and manufacturing has never been the same since.
First, there is only ever one first mover and many fast followers. Thus, it's not entirely surprising that at least one fast follower would dominate the leader.
Secondly, the failure rate calculations are highly suspect due to historical redactionism. If a first mover fails, it will still be remembered due to it's contribution to the field. If a fast follower fails, it becomes hard to even discover that it existed in the first place.
Think of this in terms of car companies. Ford was the first mover but, up until the 1920's, there were almost a thousand different car companies started by various people: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_United_States_a... . 99% of them failed, some had moderate success and a few like Toyota & GM had enough outsized success to eventually beat Ford. Being a "fast follower" in this case almost always meant you were dead.