Rating: 
Summary: Impressive in scope but poorly written (re: clarity, etc)
Review: 1. I enjoyed the book and its premise. The book's major premise was shocking in its implications (ie. that it is the companies that are doing everything "right" and "by the book" that are the companies most susceptible to destruction from emerging disruptive technologies). However,I never did understand Christensen's "leap" in Chapter 8 when he asserted that "Historically, when this performance oversupply occurs, it creates an opportunity for a disruptive technology to emerge and subsequently to invade established markets from below". Try as I might, I was unable to find any documentation or rational explanation for this blanket assertion of his. Up to that point in the book, I was hanging on by my fingernails, but this hypothesis left me questioning its underlying basis. I'm certain that I just missed the rationale for this assertion. However, this brings me to my second point:2. Why is it that professors have to write in rambling compound sentences. Many was the time that I had to repeatedly re-read approximately 80% of his book as I struggled with context, syntax and just plainly poor grammar. What ever happened to simple sentences? The above-quoted sentence (of Christensen)was one of the shortest and clearest sentences in the book!! The subject matter in the book was striking in its implications; it deserved to be more clearly and simply described. 3. If truth be told, I felt that the 211 page book, as a conveyer of information, could have been about 150 pages shorter. As a scholarly work and a doctoral dissertaion, I can understand the formality involved in the writing. However, such writing did not make the book any easier to read and understand. It was shear torture....and the charts and graphs--ENOUGH ALREADY!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Principles & Strategies of Technology Innovation
Review: It provides eye-opening, research-based insights to the problems of managing innovation. Many are insights that although are counter-intuitive (e.g., good management and listening too closely to customers are a root cause of many problems in innovation), nevertheless are compelling when we carefully examine the histories of firms like IBM. Professor Christensen drives to understand root causes and extract fundamental principles based on thorough examination of the failures of many large, established companies to take new technologies from the lab to market. A must read for anyone within large or small firms involved in bringing innovative technologies to market. One of my favorite courses and professors in grad school.
Rating:
Summary: Seminal
Review: This book takes the radical position that great companies can fail precisely because they do everything right. It demonstrates why outstanding companies lose their market leadership when confronted with disruptive technology-and it explains how to avoid a similar fate. Drawing on insights from a number of industries-such as the computer and disk drive industries, discount retailing, minimills, pharmaceuticals, and the automobile industry-Christensen shows why good management often turns out to be all wrong-and what to do about it.
Rating:
Summary: Enlightening & thought provoking
Review: This was an excellent book and I agree with others that you pick up more on the second read. I learned a lot about disruptive technologies, processes and ideas. This had great relevance to current and future business strategies and "world view", as well as placing many past experiences in a clearer context. The text is not great prose, and many of the examples get a bit too detailed and didactic, but with every one you see parallels to other industries and your own visions and experiences. This is excellent not only for those trying not to be overtaken by disruptive technologies but also for those of us looking for disruptive opportunities.
Rating:
Summary: Even better read the second time around
Review: Professor Christensen's book details how good management can still fail to recognize an innovative opportunity. Because large companies have large market growth requirements and listen to established customers, they almost always miss a new dynamic and exploding emerging market. To overcome this, the professor suggests creating a seperate skunkwork where small market battles can be fought (more elan, allowed to fail and reassault, and less inertia). This is one of the most powerfully argued business books of recent past and each point makes absolute sense to any business facing the horns of the dilemma.
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Summary: Brilliant!
Review: This is possibly the best book on the impact of technology in business that I have read. The fact that this book has been extremely well researched makes it extremely credible. Couple that with an extremely comfortable writing style and persuasive arguement and you have a book that will not let you sleep until you are finished. Most books on the subject are based on anecdotal evidence. This work is based on substantive research. This work provides a very persuasive reasoning as to why businesses struggle with certain technological changes. I definitely recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Not What I Expected
Review: This book was as compelling to read as a college quantitative analysis text. If you are interested in a narrative account of the evolution of the information system industry this is probably not the book for you. But if you yearn for those undergrad and post graduate days and nights spent plowing through business case studies, complete with mind bending graphs and mystifying charts, by all means bring this book with you on your summer vacation.
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Summary: Calling all innovators out there...
Review: This book takes a radical position that great companies can fail precisely because they excel at the commonly accepted practice of good management. And it shows companies how they can avoid that fate.
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Summary: The Blueprint for Your Dot.Com is At Hand
Review: In the space of a few months, I've bumped into a half-dozen corporate planners who've told me, "Drop everything you're doing and run--do not walk--to your nearest bookseller and get Clayton Christenson's The Innovator's Dilemma." Investigating further, I found that, in the industry press, Christenson's book is viewed as The New Gospel. Now having read the thing, I can see what all the fuss is about; by the final chapter, the counterintuitive idea that (under clearly specified conditions) "rigorous pursuit of your customer's interest can indeed sink your firm" seems as inevitable as the sunrise. Moreover, reading Christenson now, as Wall Street lurches through the Era of Dot.Com/Madness, it's easy to believe the book, and Chapter Nine in particular, has served a hefty percentage of recent internet start-ups as a template for mapping the market and assessing whether the technology offered is sufficiently disruptive. (Christenson's use of the term "technology" is process-related and more than just the latest widget). As a public sector drone, I was further impressed that Christenson's analytic approach is broadly, if metaphorically, applicable to a range of organizations--non-profit, non-commercial, public--trying to keep from being overrun by the forces of change. Some critics have pooh-poohed Christenson's analysis as old wine in a new bottle--"what's the big deal about successful firms having difficulty dealing with the low end of their markets?" etc.--but the lucid writing, clear plan, well-sprung analytic framework (particularly the integration of "value networks" and "technology trajectories"), and compelling marshaling of case material make this an enjoyable, often revelatory, and, yes, innovative dissection of how great firms become undone by new technologies.
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Summary: The Intro and First Chapters are worth the book
Review: Much of the focus on this book and its popularlity has been on innabilities of companies to adapt to major tech shifts and the great data to support this (though I wish there was a more accessible example outside of the disk drive industry that was as well researched). I would contend that there is a profound gem hidden early in the book regarding the concept of 'value networks'. (I'm sure some org behavior folks have thought about this but few people in the strategy -- esp. mgmt or change consulting -- have taken this to heart.) Organizations are a network of structural relationships between stakeholders (employees, suppliers, investors, customers, et al) that is highly inflexible (this is what creates the consistency necessary large orgs and their quality expectations, requirements). When organzations try to do something new, this network of relationships often keeps change in check. Forget the tech angle, this is about companies, momentum and inflexibility and how most companies can't change or dramatically evolve without leadership that recognizes that the entire network must be primed to accepted radical transformation and its requisite ambiguity (e.g., GE and Gerstner or Maytag and Lloyd Ward). Totally worth trudging through the numbers.
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