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The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail

The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail

List Price: $18.95
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good book, somewhat limited focus
Review: Comment: This review is part of an assignment for the E-commerce MBA class at San Jose State University.

The Innovators Dilemma is an interesting book about the problems that larger organizations have trying to compete with start-ups in new markets. The book discusses how larger companies rarely are successful in developing products for emerging or non-existent markets.

The book provides some very relevant examples how larger companies--primarily in the technology sector, but not limited to them--often find themselves stuck trying to satisfy their current, and large, customers. This often precludes them from devoting resources to new technologies for emerging markets, due to the fact that those markets do not yet exist, and will not provide adequate revenues to maintain a required level of growth.

The Innovators Dilemma is generally well written, but at times a bit verbose. I found that some sections were difficult to follow, due to the grammar that is used. I found the book interesting, although there are a lot of examples revolving around the disk drive industry, which personally I do not have a lot of interest in.

This book is likely to be helpful for managers of companies that have or use some sort of technology that sets them apart from their competitors. In particular, this will be helpful for managers at the larger companies that need to have large revenue growth year over year. It could also be helpful for managers of smaller companies, especially those who are designing products that do not have a market yet, so they are able to understand what the competitive advantage that they will have over the large companies providing the existing technology.

This book does intend to give managers ideas how to avoid the "dilemma," however it is my impression that it would be very difficult for one, or even a group of, individual manager to change the companies' focus to the point necessary to avoid the trap. There are many changes that one must incur to avoid the problem of trying to satisfy current customers who are providing your revenue stream, including garnering support from upper management and other stakeholders, as well as altering the processes and values of the organization.

Overall, I would recommend this book to mangers who have decision making authority or influence in companies that produce or use technology products. It provides an interesting viewpoint, although I feel that it is a bit too limited to be of use to a wider audience.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Absolutely fascinating
Review: The Innovator's Dilemma shows how well established, successful businesses can fail, even when they do everything right (or at least, everything logical). Christensen's discussion focusses on the disk drive industry, but includes examples from other industries as well (such as the American steel industry). The core of his argument is that established companies will choose to invest their resources in "sustaining technologies" that are basically improvements on their existing products. These companies will often be some of the first to experiment with disruptive technologies, but their customers don't demand these technologies and the company doesn't see a good enough opportunity to invest in them.

The book provides a good amount of detail - enough to get you to buy into his argument without becoming difficult to read.

Overall, a fascinating topic presented in a quick, easy read. Highly recommended.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: mr santa monica
Review: This book is what happens when someone is in academia too long.....Full of simple customers preferences framed as vast technological survival of the fittest darwinian evolutions...the reason people want smalled disk drives is not capacity, its that smaller disks are easier to handle...the reason small rigid disks overcame floppies is that they are more durible...these product innovations are interations between the mass os consumer individuals and the product.....the reason japanese cars rock is that they get on from a to be and dont break....oowowwowowowo=wow!!!!!!! this is not darwin....the mental mastrubation and feeling wow im so smart i made a chart in this book are annoying.....the business school hierarchy is the ony reason guys like clayton have a job.........also businesses are greedy...compaq computers will never make a supercheap line of pc-s as one can get from a smaller outfit because they want large salws numbers and know other big corps need to buy in volume and have the pockets and size to not want to depend on the small guys for suport/returns/small corp out of biz.......so overpriced lines of pc-s are sols by the gross,....also some psychological/economic analysis cuts to the chase here also.....businesses are caught because they want to maximuize sales while science and mass production always lower prices and production costs as processes improve and the good reaches non-rare status.........computers are perfect business because programs get bigger so computers need to get bigger....if computers got smaller and programs faster ont eh same size RAM/Processor....then companies put themselves out of biz....as with phone compainies...you pay more tahn ever....and it is disguised behind extra "essentail" features like call waiting that "add value"....until housing is cloned so that all have it control with be the dollar...christiansen etc. are just hand wavers making a killing off the system...so deal..real politique rules the world still...viva feudalism....it will alst forever.........gws santa monica ca 4-4-01

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: You are the market leader. Watchout for that new kid on bloc
Review: Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton M Christensen presents a compelling argument why outstanding companies that do everything right from all perspectives still fail when confronted with disruptive changes in technologies. The dilemma; the logical, competent decisions of management that are critical to the success of their companies are also the cause of company's losing the leadership position and possible demise. This is a must read for anyone who works for or belongs to the management team of a technology company. The innovator's Dilemma, deals with changes in technologies that cause disruptions in existing technology growth trends. Management is aware of the customer requirements. Customer is the source of all revenue. These customers have their requirements which are based on sustaining technology. Market share of the disruptive technology is not large enough for the company to meet its growth requirements based on the projected stock prices. This new disruptive technology has a much lower margin and therefore not feasible for the company to go to that market. What is the motivation for the company to commit its resources? Especially, when there is not guarentee that this technology will ever be viable. Managers in every organization must resolve "the innovator's dilemma." Dr. Christensen's book provides examples from different market segments when time and again company have fallen pray to disruptive technologies. Even those companies, who once used a disruptive technology to attain its market leadership. The author argues that even the most successful companies fall victim the Innovator's Dilemma, because it is a natural law of business, satisfy the customers' requirement. A must read for anyone within large or small firms.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Book
Review: Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma is an incredible book about the dangers of focusing on current high margin activities at the cost of future opportunities. I highly recommend this book.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Did you ever wish you could keep a book a secret?
Review: This book is so good you wish your competitors could be kept from reading it! Christensen does more the think "out of the box" he shows you how he developed and substantiated the themes in the book.

The disk drive industry is broken down to exemplify an area that has rapid "disruptive" technology changes at regular intervals... and how companies adapt and fail...

I tell you this book can cost you lost sleep as you contemplate what could shake up your industry and how you will react. This book will be a clasic for 100 years (or more). A must have in anyones collection (no I am not related to the author).

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Leaping Over the Barriers You Create Against Innovation
Review: This book clearly deserves more than five stars. It has positively influenced more technology executives than any other book.

The book does a wonderful job of explaining how traditions, bureaucracy, disbelief about the potential of new technologies, and misconceptions about the market hurt companies. Professor Christensen is a Boston Consulting Group alum, as am I, and that firm has been very interested in the question of why dominant firms lose out to new entrants featuring innovative technologies. Professor Christensen has written the best work on this subject that it has been my pleasure to read. Unlike most academics, he is rigorous without being dull or irrelevant to those who must operate businesses. I particularly found his exploration of the differences between a sustaining and a disruptive technology to be very useful. His insights into how accounting and financial concerns can "stall" organizational progress were also valuable.

His cases (especially the hard disk ones) accurately capture many of the classic "stalls" that delay organizational progress. For example, tradition says that everyone focuses on serving the current customers. That's where the bread and butter are. Also, the overhead structure is established to serve those current needs.

Both perspectives no longer serve when a disruptive technology is involved, and he persuasively argues that being first with disruptive technologies is usually very important.

Bureaucracy comes into play because the authorization process requires a lot of confidence by those who will bet their careers that the market and financial projections will be achieved. The bureaucracy also increases the likelihood that an error will be made, or an unnecessary delay will occur.

Disbelief comes from the tendency to misdefine who the customers will be and to underestimate the long-term potential of the technology. Professor Christensen puts in some nice technology development/time charts in to show how to better anticipate a new technology expanding from a lower need-defined market into the mainstream market.

Misconception comes in because people misunderstand the danger of the disruptive technology, and how to manage it. THE INNOVATOR'S DILEMMA is very hepful here because it provides a model of best practices to cure the misconception stall here.

Three other stalls are often important: Procrastination (delaying when delay is costly); Ugly Ducklings (avoiding what is unattractive, physically or financially); and Communications (not getting the message or not understanding the message). I suspect all 3 play a big role in the cases here, but I could not tell from the way the cases were written. I hope in his future work, Professor Christensen will also tie his thinking into the idea of innovation itself.

I personally favor an 8 step process for improving innovation. One, measure everything you can in an area to understand how the measurements can help you improve. Two, apply the same approach to your most important activities. Be sure to consider how and why noncustomers do not find your offerings appealing. Three, seek out the best practices in other industries in these important activities, and estimate where these best practices will be in five years. Four, assemble a new combination of best practices from these cases that goes beyond what any one company will be doing in five years. Five, imagine the best that anyone will ever be able to do, ever, as the ideal best practice. In the case of disruptive technologies this would involve spotting them well in advance and being able to pursue them without pain to the rest of the organization, and pursuing very rapid adoption that leads to dominating the new marketplace. Six, find ways to approach the ideal best practice. Seventh, put the best people, resources, and incentives together to create great success in exceeding the future best practice and approaching the ideal best practice. Eight, repeat steps one through seven.

Do buy, read, and apply the lessons of THE INNOVATOR'S DILEMMA. This is pure gold. Also, send Professor Christensen a friendly note to encourage him to do more studies like this one on innovation. He deserves our support.

I also suggest that you set up some skunk works to advance potentially disruptive technologies, as a way to develop more experience in improving your innovative potential. You may also wish to study Cisco's attempt to be technology agnostics, to see what you can learn from their experience as well.

Let innovation reign supreme!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: True also for success of existing technologies
Review: I concur with the large majority of reviewers that this is an exceptional book that reveals and explains clearly some of tthe amjor factors forcing technological evolution.

The author clearly points out that a primary factor for technological replacement is a mismatch between what a technology can deliver and what service values customers are willing to pay for. He demonstrates with case studies that technological capability evolution usually outpaces the increase in customer needs. This will usually result in a occurance where teh customer does not need and is unwilling to pay for a technology and so will replace by what was seen previously as an inferior choice.

Technological replacement is the scenario presented by the author. However there is another alternative which he did not describe. Chrostensen sees technological replacement as a change to a different network of values that means a change to a different technology. However the case of the competition between Ethernet and ATM (asynchronous transfer mode)for primacy in the local area network environment shows that is not teh only case. Ethernet was the existing technology and was based primarily on low cost. Much technological invenstment was made to reduce the costs of Ethernet interfaces until tehy became cheap enough to be ubiquitous. Its value as a low cost solution was challenged by ATM which was able to be competitive with Ethernet in price due to semiconductor advances and promised much more in the way of quality of service for new applications such as multimedia and voice processing.

ATM was the disruptive technology but it did not replace Ethernet. However its value network did dramatically alter the value network that Ethernet provided. Ethernet providers did not retreat into niche high performance markets as Christenesen illustrates that suppiers of other technologies did. Instead they adopted the value network of ATM and added it to their own. They also challenged ATM in its own value network by creating new values such as speed and ease of set up which directly challenged the fundamental ATM technology.

As Christensen pointed out, a change to a value metwork brings about technological change. However in this case there was no technological replacement. The existing technology faced the challenge to its value network by coopting that of the disruptive technology and adding new values of its own. It was the disruptive technology of ATM which fled to niche high performance markets.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of the better technology business books
Review: I have read a number of technology oriented business books, and this one is perhaps the best. It applies well thought through analysis to non-obvious theories and comes out with valuable insight. It is well written and easy to follow. I also find that is comes up often in dicussions.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Both in Business and in Personal Finance
Review: This book is a very powerful framework, by which you can undesrtand how emerging new business opportunities compete with you current product lines and not to kill them before they become profitable. There are many common flaws, like treating a new opportunity with the same focus, team and knowledge as your previous successes.

It helps you understand how profit will be emerging in the new products and how the current starts will be surely killed if you don't do anything about it in time and to acknowledge a high risk situation.

Have you ever wonder why big companies don't react in time against the smaller competetiors or why personally you discard new opportunites because you don't have a clear decision criteria, and see how the returns will come about?

This book can help you


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