| | |  | Guy Kawasaki | Home » » The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business (Collins Business Essentials) | | | | | | | Description: | | In this revolutionary bestseller, Harvard professor Clayton M. Christensen says outstanding companies can do everything right and still lose their market leadership, or worse, disappear completely. And he not only proves what he says, he tells others how to avoid a similar fate. Focusing on "disruptive technology" of the Honda Supercub, Intel's 8088 processor, and the hydraulic excavator, Christensen shows why most companies miss "the next great wave." 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. | | | Features: | |
• ISBN13: 9780060521998
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
•
| | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Clayton M. Christensen | | Paperback:
| 320 pages | | Publisher:
| Harper Paperbacks | | Publication Date:
| 2003-01 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0060521996 | | Package Length:
| 7.95 inches | | Package Width:
| 5.28 inches | | Package Height:
| 0.87 inches | | Package Weight:
| 0.53 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 174 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
 Indispensable ReadingOct 31, 2009
Every person intimately involved in any organization should read this book.
This book changed most management thinking and many organizational structures of corporate America. It should change more. This book should be required reading for anyone involved or studying profit and non-profit organizations.
If you have 5 books on your management shelf, this should be one of them.
 A Different Paradigm on Managing InnovationOct 18, 2009
The Innovator's Dilemma is a unique approach to understanding corporate failure. Christiansen's thesis is that well managed companies with all the best processes in place do fail. The failure is not due to inefficiency, bad management or bad processes but due to companies being responsible in terms of listening to their customers, investing in technologies that their customers' demand and rationally allocating resources to high-margin products. Christiansen argues that these investments are made on sustaining technologies as opposed to disruptive technologies. He reason's established sector leaders do this because the initial market for disruptive technologies is too small to justify the investment and sustain corporate growth. This provides new entrants with time and space to establish themselves in the emerging market and that when the performance of the disruptive technology intersects the needs placed on the traditional technologies in an industry, these disruptive technologies will start to take over from the traditional sector leaders.
Christiansen's thesis is that disruptive technologies exist in value networks with lower cost structures and lower margins than the value networks occupied by market leaders that focus on sustaining technologies and incremental technological developments. Christiansen argues that there are obviously more tangible benefits for competitors in value networks with lower costs structures (and margins) to attack value networks with higher margins. On the contrary, there is very little incentive for companies embedded in high-margin value networks to target sectors in the parallel network. And this then is the dilemma: how do current market leaders grow and develop substitute products that will make their current catalog redundant when the substitutes offer very little margin and won't contribute to the overall growth of the company.
Christiansen does suggest a few ways in which managers can facilitate the development of disruptive technologies. He first says managers should not grow disruptive technologies in established companies. Rather he argues they should create separate business units or companies with organizational sizes that match the market size. He also suggests that no one can really forecast the potential of market for disruptive technologies since the market doesn't exist. He suggests that instead of acting that forecasts are accurate, companies should learn and grow together about needed features and applications for their new products.
Even though the book was first published in 1997 the ideas are still valid. We have recently seen the rise of netbook computers and while Taiwanese companies are leading the way in the development and innovation of these products, traditional notebook and PC heavyweights like Dell are arguing against entering this market. Responding to Acer's recent rise to the second largest PC company by volume (Q3 09) in the world, Dell suggested they are more concerned with revenue and margin as opposed to volume. Another example closely aligned to the rise of netbooks are ARM processors. ARM processors are low cost processors licensed by a UK company. While they do not have the performance parameters of any of Intel's PC processors and chipsets, ARM processors (low performance, cost, power etc.) have been growing in the mobile phone space and are now entering the computer space through netbook computers on a different business model to Intel's or AMD. Of course Intel crushed AMD through a brutal price war since they both had similar business models. Even though I won't bet against Intel, it will be harder for them to disrupt ARMs growth.
Christiansen's book is well argued, clear and concise. His extensive use of case studies from a variety of industries including the hard disk sector, steel mills, discount retailing, and the excavator industries are enlightening and educational. He does reemphasize his points time and time again using different examples but he is merely honing in on his ideas and supporting them from a wide array of industries. It's a good read and essential for managers and executives who have the power to influence investment strategies for firms and resource allocation. However, for most of us who work in the trenches it is interesting and educational and I do recommend it to managers and other's that hope to develop new technologies and applications.
0 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Good information, not an easy readOct 11, 2009
This book included a good analysis of the featured business failures, yet was light on ways to intuitively or definitively identify distruptive innovations.
0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Reader from IndiaOct 01, 2009
Whatever Christensen has to offer he does it in the introduction. The rest of the chapters are merely a rehash of whatever has been said in the introduction with examples. So read the introduction. Then read the "Book Group Guide" at the end. And if you have time go over the chapters.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Thought provoking book on change and disruptionSep 16, 2009
In The Innovator's Dilemma, Clayton Christensen shows how even great companies, with great managers, who are doing everything "right", can still be stymied, and can even be put out of business by, what he calls "disruptive technologies".
The term disruptive technology is bandied about quite a bit today, but often people seem to mean by it a technology that is radically different from what went before. This in contrast to technologies that build upon well-practiced capabilities, otherwise known as incremental improvements.
But Christensen shows that established companies can introduce either incremental or completely radical technologies and be very successful, as long as they are sustaining and not disruptive technologies.
What makes a technology "disruptive", if it is not how radically different it is? Let us say you are in an established company. A disruptive technology is one that your own customers do not want. It doesn't fit their needs, for one reason or another. It doesn't fit into your established markets.
Meanwhile there is some other market elsewhere that does want it, but that market tends to be small, it tends to be undefined, and as a result it is not of interest to an established company. It doesn't fit the growth needs of your company. Often a smaller company will create and nurture this other market. Because the company is smaller, it can get excited about this smaller market.
Finally, the disruption comes about because the new technology improves enough that your own customers now want it. But as you haven't been paying attention to it until now, the smaller company has all the experience in the new technology and proceeds to methodically take all your customers.
The Innovator's Dilemma outlines this phenomenon and gives many examples from wildly different industries. The process happens in fast moving industries and slow moving industries. It happens in medicine, greeting cards, notebook computers, utility companies, and disk drive companies. It can happen to YOU.
Then in the second half of the book, some ways to address the dilemma are outlined.
Chirstensen writes well, and includes plenty of examples and charts and graphs to illustrate his points. Sometimes business books can seem dull or plodding or irrelevant to someone without an MBA, but not this one.
Highly recommended to anyone interested in how companies in their own industry can better handle change and disruption.
| | |
|
