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Clayton M. Christensen

The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business Paperback – October 4, 2011

by Clayton M. Christensen (Author)

249 ratings

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The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Management of Innovation and Change)
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“Absolutely brilliant. Clayton Christensen provides an insightful analysis of changing technology and its importance to a company’s future success.”
—Michael R. Bloomberg

“This book ought to chill any executive who feels bulletproof —and inspire entrepreneurs aiming their guns.”
—Forbes

The Innovator’s Dilemma is the revolutionary business book that has forever changed corporate America. Based on a truly radical idea—that great companies can fail precisely because they do everything right—this Wall Street Journal, Business Week and New York Times Business bestseller is one of the most provocative and important business books ever written. Entrepreneurs, managers, and CEOs ignore its wisdom and its warnings at their great peril.

Editorial Reviews

Review

""The Innovator's Dilemma" is becoming a handbook for CEOs remaking their businesses for the Net."- BusinessWeek"In a sea of mostly worthless business books, this is an upside surprise - sharply written and rigorous enough to be predictive..."The Innovator's Dilemma" could be the wake-up call you need."- Rich Karlgaard, "Forbes"""The Innovator's Dilemma" captures the critical role of leadership in creating markets."- John Seely Brown, chief scientist, Xerox Corp., and director, Xerox Parc"Succinct and clearly written, "The Innovator's Dilemma" is an important book that belongs on every manager's bookshelf. Highly recommended."- Harry C. Edwards, "Amazon.com""This book ought to chill any executive who feels bulletproof - and inspire entrepreneurs aiming their guns."- "Forbes""This is a compelling argument, thoroughly researched and superbly written, which challenges conventional theory."- Jon Hughes, "Supply Management""I cannot recommend this book strongly enough - ignore it at your peril."- Martin Fakley, "Information Access""[A] masterpiece...The most profound and useful business book ever written about innovation."- George Gilder, "Gilder Technology Report""Absolutely brilliant. Clayton Christensen provides an insightful analysis of changing technology and its importance to a company's future success."- Michael R. Bloomberg, CEO & Founder, "Bloomberg Financial Markets""This book addresses a tough problem that most successful companies will face eventually. It's lucid, analytical - and scary."- Dr. Andrew S. Grove, chairman & CEO, Intel Corporation"Clayton Christensen's groundbreaking book...brings fresh insight and understanding to the complex and critically important relationshipsbetween technological change and business success...His conclusions provide food for thought for the top management of every company."- Richard N. Foster, Director, "McKinsey & Company""The Best Business Book of 1997."- The "Financial Times"/Booz Allen & Hamilton Global Business Book Awards""The Innovator's Dilemma has become the book to read among mainstream managers trying to dope out an Internet strategy."-- "New York Times

From the Back Cover

In this revolutionary bestseller, innovation expert Clayton M. Christensen says outstanding companies can do everything right and still lose their market leadership—or worse, disappear altogether. And not only does he prove what he says, but he tells others how to avoid a similar fate.

Focusing on “disruptive technology,” Christensen shows why most companies miss out on new waves of innovation. Whether in electronics or retailing, a successful company with established products will get pushed aside unless managers know when to abandon traditional business practices. Using the lessons of successes and failures from leading companies, The Innovator’s Dilemma presents a set of rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation.

Find out:

When it is right not to listen to customers.
When to invest in developing lower-performance products that promise lower margins.
When to pursue small markets at the expense of seemingly larger and more lucrative ones.

Sharp, cogent, and provocative, The Innovator’s Dilemma is one of the most talked-about books of our time—and one no savvy manager or entrepreneur should be without.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product details

Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: HarperBusiness; Reprint edition (October 4, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9780062060242
ISBN-13: 978-0062060242
ASIN: 0062060244
Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.8 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
Customer Reviews: 245 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #42,092 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #19 in Industrial Management & Leadership
- #55 in Development & Growth Economics (Books)
- #69 in Theory of Economics

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245 customer reviews

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Jim Clack

You Need to Read this If Your Business in Involved in Innovation

January 2, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This is not a nail-biter, nor does the author do a good job of keeping you interested. It is dry and tedious. So why do I give it five stars?

Clayton M. Christensen has recognized a major problem in business, that of tapping into disruptive innovation in a successful way, and tells us how to avoid the pitfalls and to leverage it to the advantage of the company. He has plenty of insight and is a big-picture thinker. The book is enlightening and is required reading for any business person that is in a field where innovation is important. By the way, this is a business book, not an inventor's book - as it is not about innovation itself, but is about applying that innovation to your business.

Once you get through the first couple of chapters you will realize how important this book can be and you will want to read the rest of it.

16 people found this helpful

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Rev. Dr. C.H.E. Sadaphal

(4.5 stars) A paradigm shift in thought about how good companies can fail and how innovator’s can succeed.

September 4, 2015

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Attention all future game-changers: If you’re looking to change the world, you can’t follow the world’s rules. This book gives you a blueprint for action.
The Innovator’s Dilemma explains how excellent companies with excellent managers with excellent teams and excellent strategies can do everything right and still fail. The Innovator’s Dilemma also explains how innovators with “disruptive” technologies on the fringes of the mainstream cannot follow the same rules as existing firms.

In driving toward market leadership, existing and disruptive firms must follow separate and distinct paths.

Christensen shows that successful innovation is not unpredictable. This comes with the recognition, however, that “data only exist about the past” and hence what is working in the present for leading firms need not apply to disruptive firms of the future. This paradigm necessarily applies to all companies and is not exclusive to technological ones.

The core value of this book is that it gives specific, actionable strategies on when listening to consumers is dead wrong, when “what has worked before” should be abandoned, and when cost-ineffective strategies should be pursued as opposed to more profitable ones. All of the author’s conclusions are supported by extensive research and thorough market analysis.

Part I is called “Why Great Companies Fail” and its aim is self-explanatory. Part II, the larger chunk of the book, is called “Managing Disruptive Technology Change” and gives practical and real-life advice on how to adapt to innovation and changing market landscapes. The entire book is grounded in historical and contemporary examples so each point that the author makes is illustrated with a case study.

Another benefit of this book is that it is repetitive and the author frequently pauses to recount what has already been said and where he is going. This makes reading isolated sections of the book very easy without having to rely on other parts for clarity. Also, although the book is aimed at those in the business world, it is extremely easy to read and understandable from a non-business perspective. Furthermore, in order to get the “main idea” one could just read the Preface and Chapter 11 (Summary) to extract the essential points of the text. In the end, The Innovator’s Dilemma is a business classic for a reason, and no entrepreneur, founder of a startup, innovator, businessperson—or anyone who thinks there is a better way to do things—should be without it.

9 people found this helpful

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D Stratton

Great Insight, but a tough read.

April 18, 2012

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Clayton M. Christensen is a professor at the Harvard Business School. In the Innovator's Dilemma, he presents his research into business life cycles and how larger companies find it difficult to innovate. He shows how these larger companies eventually are replaced by innovators who make inroads by taking the bottom markets willing ceded to them by the bigger companies. Little by little, the smaller companies eat away until they have market dominance themselves, leaving the once market leader without a place to go.

The concept of how small companies can thrive in a world dominated by large companies is an interesting one, especially for the entrepreneurs facing Goliath. Christensen lays out several test cases where the larger company couldn't innovate, allowing smaller companies to enter at the bottom of the market. He even shows how and why it made sense for the management of these dominant companies to allow this to happen - at the time. Innovation is not an easy prospect for large companies because their large existing customer base often will not allow the innovations to move forward because it doesn't fit their needs. Innovations often bring a different customer and large companies are not always able to choose to service both.

Christensen provides a few examples of this phenomena in excruciating detail, studying the rapidly changing industries of disk drives and steel production. He rounds out the book with a discussion of the steam shovel and how it lost out to hydraulics. In a final case study, he examines how the principles could be applied to a potential disruptive technology - the electric car. He lays out a complete game plan for a company to take the innovations available and capture a new market. Sadly, in the years since publication in 1997, it doesn't appear anyone has taken up the challenge, although perhaps Tesla Motors has come the closest.

The problem I have with Christensen's book is his writing style. He is definitely a Harvard Business School professor. He delves deeply into his research, explaining every nuance of the industry in such detail as to leave no doubt he has done an extensive study. I grew up in IT, living just miles away from one of the great innovators of the disk drive industry, yet I learned many things about disk drives. I hadn't imagined I could get a technical education from a book on business management.

Christensen's writing style was the biggest barrier to the material. His explanations were too deeply steeped with details that didn't move the story forward. While the datum was valid and important, it didn't necessarily have to be presented in long, exhaustive detail. Today's readers do not have a lot of time or desire to spend long stretches of deep explanation. I found it necessary to spend at least 45 minutes reading before getting "into" the book. I couldn't help comparing the style to that of Jim Collins in Great by Choice. Yes, Collins is also a researcher who loves detail. The difference is that Collins moves all his detailed explanations to the appendix where those who desire it can find it. The book itself is organized into fast moving, short chapters laying out the salient points distilled from the exhaustive research. I would really have appreciated this approach in this book by Christensen. Collins is a storyteller where Christensen is a Harvard professor.

Christensen's insight is worth the slog through the knee deep data. Just be ready with a canteen for dry stretches of endless detail as far as the eye can see.

15 people found this helpful

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JamiSteven

... chapter - this book for me was so incredibly dull it’s basically just a collection of random facts about ...

January 25, 2018

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I can’t say this review is for the entire book because I was unable to read past the second chapter - this book for me was so incredibly dull it’s basically just a collection of random facts about tech in history. So much text used to communicate a lesson that could be taught in 3 paragraphs max. The amount of concepts and theorizing happening in this book is mind blowing, every single page i read im thinking to myself “get to the F’ing point already!!!” From what I’ve gather it’s basically this “fail to pivot, or fail to listen to the market and your customers and you yourself will fail” the end.

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