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Summary: Interesting, but not interesting enough.
Review: Well, if you are a horror fan of like Stephen King books you'll most probably LOVE this book. If you are anything but, this book is most definently NOT for you. That is my review.
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Summary: Powerful evidence for know-it-all mgrs to stop & listen
Review: This book is one of the best books on my list. Very powerful documented evidence that good managers can actually become victim to being blind in a sense, by "properly" avoiding new innovative projects or markets. Loved it.
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Summary: This book explains how business empires are undone!
Review: This book is enormously useful not only for corporate executives and Boards but also for the small businessman who wants to avoid being swallowed up by "disruptive technologies" which undermine and eliminate established firms and even whole industries. It makes clear why the more established, the more sensitive to best-customer needs an industry or firm becomes, the more it is likely to be toppled by a low-margin, low-quality, low-cost disruptive competitive technology (and the brand new industry that will exploit that new, disruptive technology). Such a new industry will advance on the incumbent in ways VIRTUALLY UNABLE TO BE DETECTED OR COUNTERED without the benefit of Dr. Christensen's analysis. This book and its analysis is a tour de force! Brilliant work! I should think it deserves its place as a classic in the history of business books.
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Summary: Informative and essential to understanding the cybespace ind
Review: Wonder if the author is familiar with the works of James F. Wells, Ph.D., who uses similar methodology and comes to similar conclusions in the fields of History, Social-psychology, and human behavior in general.His bboks are "The Story of Stupidity" and "Understanding Stupidity".
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Summary: interesting ideas, too many examples
Review: Haven't finished reading the book yet because I can't!! The ideas good but there's too much about disk-drive industry. Author explains role of disruptive technologies and how and why successful organizations ignore them very well.
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Summary: Cogent analysis of the origin and impact of new technology
Review: This recognised classic can be read in many ways.In one sense, it makes a general point about the introduction of new technologies. It's certainly true that a new technology will often appeal to price- , convenience- or reliability- concious markets, before it performs well enough to enter mainstream applications. The Internet itself is an example of this kind of "disruptive" technology (cf Papow's Enterprise.com). Yet the book does more than make this point. It also analyses the effects of the arrival of new technology in several very different markets, and looks at how incumbents and new entrants responded. As one reads these vivid stories, impeccably researched, one can picture marketing departments scrambling, and CEOs evaluating their stock options. The narration of Honda's entry into the American motorbike market, familiar to any MBA student, is given an added twist, based on the perspectives of the people who did it. It is almost worth buying the book just for that story. Where it doesn't succeed so well - though it makes a valiant attempt - is in suggesting how companies might respond to the threat of cross-over technologies. This area might be helpfully expanded in future editions. Nevertheless, a must-read for anyone serious about modern business.
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Summary: A must read for everyone
Review: I think Mr. Christensen hits upon common sense more than anything else because to paraphrase as he says we become enslaved to way things get done. Like they say, a groove can become a rut. This book should force you to challenge yourself when making decisions about future products, planning, etc. The book was so captivating that I read it in one sitting on a Saturday. I plan to reread it many times though....
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Summary: FACE YOUR FEARS AND BE FIRST WITH "DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES"
Review: I had heard rave reviews of this book before I read it, and now, I strongly encourage others to read it too. The idea is stunning. It offers a new perspective on why companies "stall". The idea is that by focusing too much emphasis on current customer needs, companies fail to adapt to new technologies that will meet customers' future needs. He calls these "disruptive technologies". It reminds me a little of Andy Grove's inflection points, except those are not limited to technologies. It sounds like Prof. Christensen agrees and suggests that to succeed, you should be first with the disruptive technology. What is most startling about this book is that the well done research looked at the highest technology companies, who should have been developing the next generation technologies. Clearly, this calls for a different model of how to succeed in business. In "THE 2,000 PERCENT SOLUTION", the inability of the existing companies to do this is called a "stall", much like Professor Christiansen's barriers to entry for the established firms. The Tradition Stall describes the perils of not questioning how and why things have been done the same way for decades. For example, one required change will be to update the financial system and resource allocation process that companies use today which hinders investing and does not accurately capture cost and returns.. Similarly a company that prides itself on focusing on customer needs may not have a good process to develop possible future needs of customers and translate them into new technologies that would be better, easier and cheaper technologies to satisfy those needs. Clearly a new management process is required. Professor Christensen begins to take us through this thinking using the electric car example. The process described in "THE 2,000 PERCENT SOLUTION" takes a complementary approach. It teaches how to create the ideal solution to solve a problem, or, for example, serve customer's current and future needs, to achieve twenty times the benefits or get there twenty times as fast. The "disruptive technology" becomes necessary as the way to get there. Read "THE INNOVATOR'S DILEMMA". It will become part of the standard business vocabulary.
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Summary: Fascinating (and logical) account of why great firms fail
Review: The sobering idea presented by Christensen is the very way good managers in successful firms make decisions sows the seeds of eventual failure. A paradigm example is drawn from the time condensed development of the computer disk drive industry. In every case, the leaders in one generation of disk drives (14", 8", 5.25", etc.) were displaced in the next. The author marshals compelling and extensive evidence this was not due to a technological or managerial failure, but rather to a marketing one. The fundamental distinction on which the entire argument (and book) turns is that between sustaining and disruptive technologies. This is closely related, but not reducible to, Utterback's discussion of discontinuous change and the emergence of a dominant technological design (1). A sustaining technology is a kind of technology that is either incremental or radical (discontinuous). But it maintains the same performance trajectory and provides the same basis for competition. Disruptive technologies show up as lower performance products, promising lower margins, in small, emerging markets. As sustaining technologies progress upmarket, a vacuum is created at lower price points into which competitors, employing disruptive technologies, can enter. Good managers, listening carefully to customers, in large markets, risk following these customers into oblivion, or, at least, ending up there themselves. One of this text's strong points is the wide variety of examples, extending beyond computing technology. Subsequent chapters disclose a strikingly similar pattern . Firms are blind-sided in diverse businesses, including, earth moving equipment, motor cycle manufacturing, pharmacology, discount retailing, minimills/steel. The technological risks involved in new product development for a known customer (market) are dwarfed by the risks of entering a new and undefined market. "They [firms] exchanged a market risk, the risk that an emerging market for the disruptive technology might not develop afterall, for a competitive risk, the risk of entering markets against entrenched competition" (p. 132). A significant technical product development risk for a known market is easier to justify using corporate hurdle and pay- back-period calculations than a "no brainer" but innovative product with an undefined market. Result? "One crucial additional disabling factor that afflicts established firms . . . is that the larger and more successful they become, the more difficult it is to muster the rationale for entering an emerging market in its early stages, when . . . that entry is so crucial" (p. 132). Resource allocation is really determined by what the big customers want. Sometimes, listening to customers can do us in. Once again, our strengths are our weaknesses. In the face of fatal sounding "gotchas," Christensen's strength lies in seeing the way out of the fly bottle: embed the disruptive technology initiative in a separate organization (subsidiary) or geographically remote laboratory. There a smaller scale market matches the size of the nascent technological initiative. Instead of trying to improve the disruptive technology enough so that it suits already defined markets - and meanwhile it sits on the shelf -experience shows firms that succeed commercially looking to find (or incubate) a new market for the disruptive technology. Having established a foothold, the new product then moves upmarket along competitive dimensions that favor the disruptive technology. The basis of competition is shifted by the new technology. This practical recommendation - though by no means trivial to implement - is an obvious starting point. At times, the reader may wonder how new technologies ever succeed in establishing themselves and flourishing at all. Consider: "Rational managers . . . can rarely build a cogent case for entering small, poorly defined low-end market that offer only lower profitability" (p. 77). Have we exchanged one puzzle - good firms failing -- for another - poorer products succeeding? Enter the role of the "value network" - commonly known as infrastructure - in determining the outcome of innovation. Edison's light bulb is just a clever cludge - indeed inferior to illuminating gas - without the right of way for wires and generators needed to deliver electricity. The overlooked - but not to be neglected part of innovation - lies in the construction of the alternative network of values (a differing trajectory for competition). The puzzle disappears as the reader realizes that an important aspect of innovation consists in building the value network within which the innovative product is to be embedded. This text exemplifies excellent writing, scholarship, editing, and publishing. The footnotes, which make excellent reading, contain useful references for further research. The author exemplifies the aphorism that those who see further stand on the shoulders of others - in this case Utterback and Moore (2) -- who came before them. The point, however, must be emphasized - Christensen really does see further. Share his vision. (1) Utterback. J.M. Mastering the dynamics of innovation: how companies can seize opportunities int he face of technological change. HBS Press, Boston, 1994. (2) Moore, Geoffrey. Crossing the chasm. New York: Harper/Collins, 1995. -- excerpt from my review published in COMPUTING REVIEWS, February, 1998
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Summary: Deep insights into the process of technology change
Review: Clayton Christensen refuses to accept the simple explanation of why large, incumbent firms often lose market share to new technologies -- poor management. Instead, he persuasively argues that good management very capably advances sustaining technologies -- technological advances that improve the performance of their proven products -- but fails to advance disruptive technologies. This distinction of sustaining and disruptive technologies provides powerful insights. The author shows in case after case how the disruptive technology is initially inferior to the established technology, and consequently has nothing to offer the established customers. Those customers effectively drive the resource allocation decisions of well managed firms and cause them to focus on further improvements to their proven and money making products. Eventually, these proven products are developed beyond the needs of the market and create a vacuum at the lower end of the market. Meanwhile, smaller organizations push the disruptive technology, find new markets where some unique attribute of the new technology creates value, and begin their own experience curve. Over time the disruptive technology is improved in features, reliability and value to the customer, and often penetrates the lower end of the traditional technology's market. The lessons Christensen draws about how large and successful firms can develop disruptive technology will prove valuable to everyone running a business. The small firm trying to develop a new product or new approach can think about whether their product/approach is disruptive or sustaining, and will learn that their probability of success in penetrating an existing market with a sustaining technology is small, but 37% of the new entrants with disruptive technology survive. Even more reassuring to these pioneers is the dismal record of established firms to see and embrace the distruptive technology before the entrants are too far ahead to catch. Overall a fascinating read.
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