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on November 23, 2016
I've been involved in innovation most of my career, and now wish I'd read this book much earlier. The simple but powerful thesis of the book is backed up by data and case studies from disparate industries. Like many business books it is a bit repetitive at the end. And my Kindle edition suffered from poor editing in the first few sections although those problems disappeared later on. But the ideas and usefulness are five stars.
on March 18, 2016
The Innovator's Dilemma lays out a very clear path to assess possible responses to emerging technologies in view of present ones. The book paints a compelling picture of why emerging technologies are usually not compatible with current strategies and value networks, and thus make no sense to pursue. But then, the book also demonstrates the critical need for managers to pursue these very technologies lest they mature and move into the manager's market. This is the innovator's dilemma: profitability today or sustainability tomorrow. However, there is a third way that allows managers to lead their organizations through this dilemma without sacrificing either profit or sustainability. By understanding the nature of disruptive innovation as opposed to sustaining innovation, and acting accordingly, management can position the organization to capitalize on both, enhancing both today's profitability and tomorrow's sustainability.
on March 31, 2017
The dilemma laid out in this book, the management challenges it provokes and the various responses by organizations are well laid out and thought provoking.
It could use an update where Tesla both validates some of the hypotheses in the section on electric vehicles, yet is disruptive not by being cheaper but by moving to a market that could appreciate a higher priced vehicle - high performance luxury cars, and now attacks the mainstream market by moving down instead of the conventional moving upmarket. This leads me to think that the book has some key concepts right, but needs to relax some of its self imposed constraints for a full, general description.
It could use an update where Tesla both validates some of the hypotheses in the section on electric vehicles, yet is disruptive not by being cheaper but by moving to a market that could appreciate a higher priced vehicle - high performance luxury cars, and now attacks the mainstream market by moving down instead of the conventional moving upmarket. This leads me to think that the book has some key concepts right, but needs to relax some of its self imposed constraints for a full, general description.
on February 25, 2014
Using data from various industries, this book discusses dilemma between sustaining and disruptive innovation.
Most technological companies drift up-market, improving technology for increasingly high-margin customers. This is sustaining innovation. It can be hard, but if you continue to serve the same market, return on investment is predictable. Sustaining innovation creates vacuum at the low end, and entrants fill it with new technologies, not as capable but better in other ways - simpler, more reliable, suitable in different environments, and typically cheaper up-front. This is disruptive innovation. When a working low-end business model is found, products start to improve until they meet demands of mainstream customers. At this point, being cheaper, or simpler, or more reliable, new technologies win.
The entrants often fail, but the wins can be huge. For sustaining innovation, being the first with new technology is not very important - you can serve the same market with incremental improvements to the previous technological generations for a while. For disruptive innovation, the first companies often take it all. They fly below the radar for a while, polishing the processes, and as soon as product is ready for mainstream, they can win overnight. So with more risk of failure, and more to gain, disruptive innovation might be attractive, statistically.
Sure smart management will invest in disruptive innovation, then? In fact, engineers at big companies often do have prototypes of disruptive technologies done before anybody else, it just must be marketed. But then, CEO has to decide between sure increase of bottom line next year using sustaining innovation, or betting on a project that might fail, and even if it succeeds, bringing very small revenue initially. Even if top management decides to bet, it is middle managers and sales people who determine resource allocation on a daily basis, and they also prefer sure bonus this year to uncertain huge win 5 years from now, so disruptive projects usually don't get much attention. Everybody waits until disruptive technology matures enough to serve existing markets, while new companies at eating into those existing markets. There were big companies that successfully brought disruptive products to market, but it requires constant attention of CEO for months. In a sense, the capabilities that allow big companies to operate in their current established markets are liabilities when trying to find new markets.
The solution suggested in the book is creating independent organizations. It can be a complete new company, or it can be a different office, but that organization must be "independent from normal resource allocation process" of mother company, and be judged on how well it can find and grow new market for the disruptive technology. It also suggests that all plans must be plans for discovery of market ("experts' forecasts will be wrong") and therefore be based about inexpensive experiments into new markets and provide for quick change of course if necessary.
The biggest concern about this book is that despite having charts everywhere, it is still more about intuitions rather than any mathematical models. It does mention that company profits can increase as competitions grab low-end market, and it does mention companies that continue to hold nice high-end market after middle-end is occupied by new technology, so decisions are not obvious. There is also a case study of one possible innovation, electric cars, but it only say that their performance is not suitable for mainstream on all metrics (it was before Tesla made it to 60 in 4 seconds) and is increasing faster than market demands. By that criteria, every company should invest in pretty much any new technology. I would have hoped for a more detailed analysis here, but it could be too much to ask from a book that was first to even bring up the innovators dilemma.
Most technological companies drift up-market, improving technology for increasingly high-margin customers. This is sustaining innovation. It can be hard, but if you continue to serve the same market, return on investment is predictable. Sustaining innovation creates vacuum at the low end, and entrants fill it with new technologies, not as capable but better in other ways - simpler, more reliable, suitable in different environments, and typically cheaper up-front. This is disruptive innovation. When a working low-end business model is found, products start to improve until they meet demands of mainstream customers. At this point, being cheaper, or simpler, or more reliable, new technologies win.
The entrants often fail, but the wins can be huge. For sustaining innovation, being the first with new technology is not very important - you can serve the same market with incremental improvements to the previous technological generations for a while. For disruptive innovation, the first companies often take it all. They fly below the radar for a while, polishing the processes, and as soon as product is ready for mainstream, they can win overnight. So with more risk of failure, and more to gain, disruptive innovation might be attractive, statistically.
Sure smart management will invest in disruptive innovation, then? In fact, engineers at big companies often do have prototypes of disruptive technologies done before anybody else, it just must be marketed. But then, CEO has to decide between sure increase of bottom line next year using sustaining innovation, or betting on a project that might fail, and even if it succeeds, bringing very small revenue initially. Even if top management decides to bet, it is middle managers and sales people who determine resource allocation on a daily basis, and they also prefer sure bonus this year to uncertain huge win 5 years from now, so disruptive projects usually don't get much attention. Everybody waits until disruptive technology matures enough to serve existing markets, while new companies at eating into those existing markets. There were big companies that successfully brought disruptive products to market, but it requires constant attention of CEO for months. In a sense, the capabilities that allow big companies to operate in their current established markets are liabilities when trying to find new markets.
The solution suggested in the book is creating independent organizations. It can be a complete new company, or it can be a different office, but that organization must be "independent from normal resource allocation process" of mother company, and be judged on how well it can find and grow new market for the disruptive technology. It also suggests that all plans must be plans for discovery of market ("experts' forecasts will be wrong") and therefore be based about inexpensive experiments into new markets and provide for quick change of course if necessary.
The biggest concern about this book is that despite having charts everywhere, it is still more about intuitions rather than any mathematical models. It does mention that company profits can increase as competitions grab low-end market, and it does mention companies that continue to hold nice high-end market after middle-end is occupied by new technology, so decisions are not obvious. There is also a case study of one possible innovation, electric cars, but it only say that their performance is not suitable for mainstream on all metrics (it was before Tesla made it to 60 in 4 seconds) and is increasing faster than market demands. By that criteria, every company should invest in pretty much any new technology. I would have hoped for a more detailed analysis here, but it could be too much to ask from a book that was first to even bring up the innovators dilemma.
TOP 1000 REVIEWERon November 26, 2013
Chances are, you’re reading this review on an example of disruptive technology. An iPhone or other smartphone. An iPad or a notebook computer. Or simply a laptop. Every one of these devices turned its industry upside down when it was introduced, driving established companies to the brink of insolvency, or even into oblivion, and paving the way for new actors to enter the landscape.
Today, almost instinctively, we understand the concept of disruptive technology. But it wasn’t until after the publication in 1995 of an article by Clayton Christensen in the Harvard Business Review entitled “Disruptive technologies: catching the wave” that the term entered the language. That seminal article was followed in 1997 by Christensen’s pathfinding book, The Innovator’s Dilemma – one of the most influential business books of all time.
Christensen, a long-time professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School, had found an answer to a question that had long mystified the business community: why had such iconic, well-managed firms as Digital Equipment Corporation, Xerox, and dozens of others that had long led their industries fallen by the wayside? The professor’s answer was not that they had simply gotten behind technologically but that they had done everything right — listening carefully to their best customers and catering to their needs by investing in sustaining technologies that offered customers added value. The problem was that the dictates of prudent business practice prevented them from investing in the sort of innovation that could turn their own industries upside down: disruptive technologies. In fact, Christensen wrote, “the only instances in which mainstream firms have successfully established a timely position in a disruptive technology were those in which the firms’ managers set up an autonomous organization charged with building a new and independent business around the disruptive technology . . . There is something about the way decisions get made in successful organizations that sows the seeds of eventual failure.”
A decade and a half ago this was a shattering insight and it explains the acclaim that Christensen’s work has received throughout the world of business. However, if you turn to his book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, in search of deeper understanding of these concepts, you may be disappointed. I was.
Sadly, this book is organized and written in a style that reeks of old-fashioned academia. Chapter One, an introduction of sorts, sums up the book as a whole — in 26 tedious pages, explaining in detail what the reader will find, chapter by chapter. First, Chapter One briefly outlines what the book will reveal, then proceeds to repeat each point in detail. Then, as though that isn’t enough, each chapter repeats the same points, adding considerably more detail. The final chapter repeats each of the major points — again. The repetition is maddening. And so is the overuse of the passive tense, which abounds throughout. Compounding the problem are the long-winded explanations of such things as how disk drives work and the distinction between thin-film technology and ferrite-oxide technology in disk drives’ read/write heads. All this material, no doubt necessary to “prove” Christensen’s thesis to his academic peers (some of whom are still not convinced), gives the book the charm and box-office appeal of a PhD dissertation about the influence of the Greek concept of the soul in 13th Century French literature.
If all you want is to get to the meat of this book and avoid slogging through endless detail about matters only an engineer could love, read the first chapter and the last one. Forget the rest. You’ll thank me.
Today, almost instinctively, we understand the concept of disruptive technology. But it wasn’t until after the publication in 1995 of an article by Clayton Christensen in the Harvard Business Review entitled “Disruptive technologies: catching the wave” that the term entered the language. That seminal article was followed in 1997 by Christensen’s pathfinding book, The Innovator’s Dilemma – one of the most influential business books of all time.
Christensen, a long-time professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School, had found an answer to a question that had long mystified the business community: why had such iconic, well-managed firms as Digital Equipment Corporation, Xerox, and dozens of others that had long led their industries fallen by the wayside? The professor’s answer was not that they had simply gotten behind technologically but that they had done everything right — listening carefully to their best customers and catering to their needs by investing in sustaining technologies that offered customers added value. The problem was that the dictates of prudent business practice prevented them from investing in the sort of innovation that could turn their own industries upside down: disruptive technologies. In fact, Christensen wrote, “the only instances in which mainstream firms have successfully established a timely position in a disruptive technology were those in which the firms’ managers set up an autonomous organization charged with building a new and independent business around the disruptive technology . . . There is something about the way decisions get made in successful organizations that sows the seeds of eventual failure.”
A decade and a half ago this was a shattering insight and it explains the acclaim that Christensen’s work has received throughout the world of business. However, if you turn to his book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, in search of deeper understanding of these concepts, you may be disappointed. I was.
Sadly, this book is organized and written in a style that reeks of old-fashioned academia. Chapter One, an introduction of sorts, sums up the book as a whole — in 26 tedious pages, explaining in detail what the reader will find, chapter by chapter. First, Chapter One briefly outlines what the book will reveal, then proceeds to repeat each point in detail. Then, as though that isn’t enough, each chapter repeats the same points, adding considerably more detail. The final chapter repeats each of the major points — again. The repetition is maddening. And so is the overuse of the passive tense, which abounds throughout. Compounding the problem are the long-winded explanations of such things as how disk drives work and the distinction between thin-film technology and ferrite-oxide technology in disk drives’ read/write heads. All this material, no doubt necessary to “prove” Christensen’s thesis to his academic peers (some of whom are still not convinced), gives the book the charm and box-office appeal of a PhD dissertation about the influence of the Greek concept of the soul in 13th Century French literature.
If all you want is to get to the meat of this book and avoid slogging through endless detail about matters only an engineer could love, read the first chapter and the last one. Forget the rest. You’ll thank me.
on March 5, 2017
What is disruptive technology? How can your company successfully recognize and approach disruptive technology? These are the questions this book will answer for you. Based on sound logic and decades of research the author walks the reader through the process of disruption and why it is so difficult for a large company to successfully lead with disruptive technology. This is a must read for anyone looking to evaluate how likely their technology is to disrupt or be disrupted.
on October 23, 2015
This was an interesting and thoughtful review of diverse technologies and specifically tackling the problem of how to innovate when it cannot be proven what the next technology will be. I appreciated the attempt to make the data more universal. I didn't give it four stars yet, mostly because I want to wait to see if I can use the approach in a positive manner. Nevertheless, it is worth the read.
on December 17, 2016
Cases are very informative, applied in various industries.
A book that every manager should carefully read.
Don't listen to customer, watch what they actually do with the technology. "Disruptive" is often attributed at smaller, simpler, more convenient, lower price tag.
A book that every manager should carefully read.
Don't listen to customer, watch what they actually do with the technology. "Disruptive" is often attributed at smaller, simpler, more convenient, lower price tag.
on January 5, 2017
Although there may be occasional exceptions, this body of wisdom presents a very well researched and clear explanation of the Principles of Disruptive Innovations. This is a great contribution to the discipline of innovation.
