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Summary: The First Must Read Business Book of the Millenium
Review: I have never written a review before, but I find this book a necessity. For any survivor of the dot com era, the '90's value bubble, or for any participant in the current hunt for value, Innovator's Solution is the place to start. In a world of mixed messages, this book's message is clearly stated and its implications are significant. The point made is that growth and success is based on discovery, not imitation, and discovery is based on the strategy of disruption: finding that one different way to enable incisive profitable growth. The revolutionary aspects of this documented concept is based on the authors' hard research and personal experience, and it lights a candle in the darkness of the current dismal 90's retrospectives and limpid self-help tomes. For anyone who is seeking to start, restart, or build from within a company seeking a value path through the 21st Century, your compass is here. I am strongly recommending this book for all my clients, classes, and friends.
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Summary: Christensen's Dilemma
Review: I rate business books on how well they help me understand the business and industry I work in, and at that score, I found The Innovator's Solution to be an extremely valuable book. It builds upon Clayton Christensen's previous book, The Innovator's Dilemma, which showed the paradox that well managed companies that listen to customers, and target the most attractive markets are often blind sided by disruptive change. While The Innovator's Dilemma described the phenomena, The Innovator's Solution is the business playbook to capitalize on it. The authors categorize business innovations into two types: Sustaining innovations target demanding, high-end customers with better performance than previously available, and disruptive innovations that introduce a product or service to new or less demanding customers, usually by providing a new level of convenience, or similar performance at a lower price. Christensen and Raynor argue that both innovations are important to companies, although disruptive innovations are the ones that have the greater potential for growth. Unfortunately, disruptive innovations are difficult to identify, and as the authors demonstrate, often are not properly confronted and dealt with by managers. This book shows how businesses can identify the nature of innovations, and how best to allocate resources and plan strategically depending on whether an innovation is sustaining or disruptive. The authors draw on a large body of case histories and business theory to present a compelling case. It differs from most business books by establishing a model, and then testing the predictions and limits of the model. For that reason alone, it is more valuable than the typical management book, which simply documents what was successful elsewhere, without a real analysis as to the reasons and limitations of this success. I work in sales and marketing for a niche optical test and measurement company and this book allowed me to identify the sustaining and disruptive innovations occurring in this industry. The Innovator's Solution will help me to make my company more successful, and I expect it will have the same effect for you.
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Summary: A critical tool to understand and succeed with innovation
Review: I rate business books on how well they help me understand the business and industry I work in, and at that score, I found The Innovator's Solution to be an extremely valuable book. It builds upon Clayton Christensen's previous book, The Innovator's Dilemma, which showed the paradox that well managed companies that listen to customers, and target the most attractive markets are often blind sided by disruptive change. While The Innovator's Dilemma described the phenomena, The Innovator's Solution is the business playbook to capitalize on it. The authors categorize business innovations into two types: Sustaining innovations target demanding, high-end customers with better performance than previously available, and disruptive innovations that introduce a product or service to new or less demanding customers, usually by providing a new level of convenience, or similar performance at a lower price. Christensen and Raynor argue that both innovations are important to companies, although disruptive innovations are the ones that have the greater potential for growth. Unfortunately, disruptive innovations are difficult to identify, and as the authors demonstrate, often are not properly confronted and dealt with by managers. This book shows how businesses can identify the nature of innovations, and how best to allocate resources and plan strategically depending on whether an innovation is sustaining or disruptive. The authors draw on a large body of case histories and business theory to present a compelling case. It differs from most business books by establishing a model, and then testing the predictions and limits of the model. For that reason alone, it is more valuable than the typical management book, which simply documents what was successful elsewhere, without a real analysis as to the reasons and limitations of this success. I work in sales and marketing for a niche optical test and measurement company and this book allowed me to identify the sustaining and disruptive innovations occurring in this industry. The Innovator's Solution will help me to make my company more successful, and I expect it will have the same effect for you.
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Summary: A Must for all Product Developers
Review: If you are at all involved with the creation and marketing of new products (and not just high-tech products), I heartily recommend this book -- you'll walk away with a better understanding of: -- How resources, process, and values combine to determine what a business organization can, and cannot do
-- How to think about "jobs for hire" in order to shape your user-centric innovation strategy
-- When to think about producing an integrated vs. a dis-integrated product offering, and why
-- What the resource allocation process is and how it will shape the destiny of your company And, if you've already read "The Innovator's Dilemma", this book will help to expand and clarify many of the concepts you already have seen. For instance, the emphasis is now on "disruptive business models", rather than "disruptive technologies", because it is really how something makes money which is the determinant of whether it is disruptive or not. Disruption is a choice, not something intrinsic to a specific technology. Definitely one of the best business books of the past year. The chapter on "jobs for hire" is worth the cover price alone.
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Summary: Certain to Become a Business "Classic"
Review: In a previous work, The Innovator's Dilemma, Christensen examines why so many companies fail to remain competitive "when they confront certain types of market and technological change....the good companies -- the kinds that many managers have admired for years and tried to emulate, the companies known for their abilities to innovate and execute....It is about well-managed companies that have their competitive antennae up, listen astutely to their customers....invest aggressively in new technologies, and yet they still lose market dominance." According to Christensen, the innovator's dilemma occurs when the logical, competent decisions of management which are critical to the success of their companies are also the reasons why they lose their positions of leadership. I wholly agree with Christensen that a given problem must first be fully understood before efforts to solve it are initiated. The challenge is even greater when the given problem poses a dilemma which (in essence) involves a paradox: Whatever has been essential to success can also cause failure. What to do? In The Innovator's Solution, Christensen and Raynor offer a wealth of strategies and tactics to solve such a dilemma, revealed by their rigorous research on hundreds of different companies. In their book, they summarize "a set of theories that can guide managers who need to grow new businesses with predictable success -- to become disruptors rather than disruptees -- and ultimately kill the well-run, established competitors." More specifically, Christensen and Raynor suggest appropriate responses to situations such as these: • When a disruptive foothold is needed which competitors "will be happy to ignore or be relieved to walk away from"
• When there are opportunities to help customers "get done more conveniently and inexpensively what they are already trying to get done" • When a low-end disruption is feasible and a business model is therefore necessary "that can make attractive profits at the discount prices required to capture customers at the low end of the market" • When determining the criteria for selecting members of a management team for a new venture NOTE: Christensen and Raynor correctly suggest that among the most important criteria is sufficient prior experience with solving problems comparable with those the new venture seems certain to encounter. • When disruption (and competing against non-consumption in particular) "requires a longer runway before a steep ascent is possible." Christensen and Raynor have no illusions whatsoever about the difficulties of creating and then sustaining successful growth, however "growth" may be defined and measured. Moreover, they observe "To our knowledge, no company has been able to build an engine of disruptive growth and keep it running and running." Among the many reasons why I admire this book so much is its direct relevance to decision-makers in organizations which have already achieved success and seem to sustaining it. Better yet, let's say, these organizations dominate their competition in the given marketplace. As Christensen and Raynor explain so convincingly, the causes of that success may well prove to be the causes of eventual failure. Therefore, all organizations (regardless of size or nature) must be involved in what Schumpeter once described as "creative destruction,"especially when highly successful, inorder to free themselves from what O'Toole calls "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom." As I see it, there are two options which can be posed in a question: Would you rather have creative but prudent "destruction" within your organization or have your organization disrupted (perhaps obliterated) by its competition? Well duh. For many decision-makers who read The Innovator's Solution, I think it will prove be the most valuable business book they ever read. Why? Because it will guide and inform their efforts with associates to design, activate, and then maintain "a well-functioning disruptive growth engine." Even then, they must keep it mind that no such mechanism will keep "running and running" forever. Improvisation and adaptability are imperative. Eventually, a new "engine" will be required but at least they will possess the knowledge and experience needed to produce another one.
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Summary: A must for product developers
Review: In this book, Christensen and Raynor argue that disruptive technologies (those technologies with a great potential, like for example: LCD displays, 802.11 wireless protocols, Linux OS, etc) are stall in some companies because of their own culture. The authors explain how innovation can be a predictable process that delivers sustainable and profitable growth. They identify the forces that cause managers to make bad decisions and present their ideas and a new framework to help product developers to create the right conditions, at the right time, for a disrupting-technology to succeed in the company and the market. They provide real-life examples from many different companies (companies like IBM, AT&T, Sony, Microsoft, and others) that sustain their claims. The authors recommend in the book a mix of sustaining innovations, outsourcing of commoditized products, and recognition and development of disruptive technology-based products. This book identifies the processes that create successful innovations and the most important thing is the strategies that can be applied in your own project.
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Summary: NO SOLUTION HERE.
Review: Let me save you the time. The writing in this *executive book* is fluent, reminiscent of Clayton's Innovator's Dilemma. Which makes this a readable book. But the idea is VERY ordinary if you think about it for more than a minute, a near-mindless rehash of perfectly predictable research methods that are already prevalent and have been available (and exercised) for decades, which means do not expect any solutions to the intriguing and universal problem Clayton posed in "Dilemma." We are presented with example after example of how companies have missed out on customer targeting. The big token example is of a milkshake retail outlet, which just mistargeted their clientele. The authors then reveal the big tra-la find that this firm's customers in the morning were health-unconscious commuters who needed something to sip on trains, and some kids in the evening...etc etc. One wonders if the authors have been so busy writing this tripe that something called qualititative marketing research totally escaped their radar. I could count a dozen MR companies *off-hand* that could conduct simple research like this in a matter of 1 week, and have the results on my desk by next Friday. So much for the "solution." I was sorely disappointed with this book because I have the utmost regard for Clayton. Grab this biz pulp for embellishing your next staff speech. But manage your expectations in terms of real take-aways.
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Summary: Business No Longer as Usual
Review: Messrs. Christensen and Raynor are going to shake up corporate America - these ideas fly in the face of how 99% of corporations behave. What really strikes me about these concepts however are how they "should" affect players outside of corporations. Here are my prognostications: 1. Venture Capital - Most VC's are locked in an out dated model and this book gives VC's a way out of their dilemma. Two out of 10 winners should not be an acceptable rate of success - this book should substantially improve that success rate. 2. Stock Analysts - Beyond the crisis of confidence that analysts are experiencing, they actually have a more fundamental problem. And that is their analysis does not provide value to investors. This book provides a new framework to analyze companies and the analysts that are early adopters of this model will provide their customers (and their own trading accounts) a significant advantage. 3. Investment Banks - It is well documented that an overwhelming percentage of M&A activity provides no value to shareholders. This book provides a model for assessing which companies should be purchased and a filter to stop bad mergers - the amount of money that will be saved here is substantial. Christensen and Raynor have provided these 3 groups with the needed infusion of new ideas that they all desperately need - let's see if they use them.
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Summary: Well worth i t.
Review: Please delete this thanks.
Rating: 
Summary: not very bad
Review: sorry for my poor english but i am a student in kyoto university in japan and i really enjoyed this book. i have read many reviews on this website and it make me understand that many people will focus on marketing side of the analysis inside this book. but this is not true. the book has many good idea about overall business management. some people will say that these idea are not new. so what? good idea is good idea and i surely enjoy reading the wonderful thought in this book. i would recommendation you read it for youself. i hope my reader review is useful to you. thank you.
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