Rating: 
Summary: Classic
Review: Well written. Extensive examples illustrated using the harddisk drive industry. Focus, start small, think big - this is what I got out from the book. I will certainly read this again and again.
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Summary: a great book for managers
Review: Today, traditional, well-known and well-respected companies are faced with a marketplace that is suffering from the impact of geopolitical issues of war and terrorism, regional and worldwide economic difficulties, and the extended global reach of formerly regional players. If that were not enough to keep a manager up at night, many are also facing disruptions from rapidly changing technologies. In his book entitled, The Innovator's Dilemma, Clayton Christensen tackles the concept of disruptive technologies - what they are, how they are nurtured, and how they have the potential to turn previously successful companies into the roadkill of capitalism. This book is well written and insightful, bringing the concepts to life with a variety of real-life examples. I highly recommend this book for business executives, both those who are living the experience today and those who think they are immune. For me, it is on to the just published sequel, The Innovator's Solution.
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Summary: Management Thinking at its best
Review: When it comes to pathbreaking management thoughts, I refer to this book as the best I have read in the last few years. We see change around us all the time, but never accept it. This book shows why we neglect change and what are its implications.
A must read for all budding entrepreneurs, leaders, managers, students...
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Summary: Incumbents are sitting ducks
Review: This is one of the most insightful books on business that I have ever read. It explains a very important concept - how radically new (disruptive) technologies can dislodge existing well-established (sustaining) technologies and in the process beat market leaders at their own game. First a brief explanation of the nature of disruptive technologies and how different they are from sustaining technologies. Then comes the inability of established firms to pursue these technologies due to "resource dependence". Excellent managers fail miserably when confronted by these disruptive forces. The conventional processes of being extremely customer focussed, profit driven and rational decision making for technology selection are the soft spots that eventually lead to the demise of these firms when attacked by disruptive products.Disruptive technologies initially offer products that perform slightly lower on a given parameter but are typically smaller, have lower unit costs and more convenient to use. Mainstream users initially reject these products due to lower performance. Hence disruptive products soon find small niches for themselves in totally new markets (value networks) where they are appropriate for use. Due to this adoption and growth in volumes in these segments the technology trajectory begins to move upwards intersecting and invading the territory of the conventional market from below. Incumbents ignore the threat even at this stage and before they realize their folly, they are soon filing for Chapter 11. Large companies ignore small markets (markets for disruptive technologies are initially small) and look for growth in established markets (markets for disruptive technologies are not initially known at all). Executives of large companies are reluctant to take on challenges in small and unknown terrain since they are always trained to "think big". The hypothesis is explained very clearly using the disk drive industry (I would like to use the term " high clock speed" industry) and extended to industries as diverse as steel, escavators, retail and pharmaceuticals. The case study on automobile industry is frightening for those serving the sustaining gasoline segment. Yesterday evening I was struggling through the chaotic New Year eve traffic at 6: 30 PM in Bangalore, India to reach home early in my 1.3 liter mid segment petrol engine car. While I was virtually trapped in the chaos, I observed a cute small battery powered car navigate effortlessly through the gaps and finally was far ahead of the crowd. What next?. I decided to revisit this book. Highly recommended for managers in all industries.
Rating: 
Summary: Why Do Good Companies Fail?
Review: You see every week in the IT Industry, companies that were once industry darlings announcing major problems just a year or two after they were at the pinnacle of success. In this book, Clayon Christensen explains why seemingly good companies fail to embrace disruptive technologies. This book is exhaustively researched, and highlights many once successful high tech companies that failed to adapt to new trends and markets. An interesting read for anyone who seeks to prevent this from happening to their company or small business.
Rating:
Summary: Raw insight, but starting to age
Review: This is a book that packs academic research around a key insight driving disruptive change. The authors cite ample research in the hard disk and other industries to track why most companies fail to anticipate the key changes in their markets. The very counterintuitive insight presented is that market leaders get trapped into listening to their current customers too much. Current customers relatively satisfied with current products tend not to drive price/performance leaps. The distruptions come from new companies that target ways of reaching low end customers that are considered too small for major players. When the low end technology reaches a certain maturity, it winds up capturing the entire market. Seems simple, but very few companies anticipate this. The book walks through the research supporting this, as well as suggestions for how companies can cope. The one knock... The business climate is changing from a "Let's topple the market" to "Let's refine our business". In the short term, we'll see less market making moves, and that will diminish the relevance of this book. If the idea sticks to the next upwards trend, then Christiansen will have his place among the great gurus. Do read the book. I wish there was a 4.5 star rating to give. You make the call.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent examples, actionable recommendations
Review: I actually read this a year or two ago, and I have found myself regularly referring to lessons presented in Clayton's excellent book, without having to reference or photocopy anything. Of particular value was the examples used to illustrate the book's core points. Examples were great because I have been able to easily recall them when explaining why the path I recommend is probably the right one, in a way that never fails to impress the point upon the listening audience. Case in point: the book uses the hard drive industry a great deal as an example of how companies easily overlook the potential of what the author calls "disruptive technologies." In this case, technology advancements enabled hard drives to get smaller, and the sales/marketing forces within the respective manufacturers' repeatedly failed to see the use or value in a product that begins as simpler, cheaper, and easier to use. You can almost hear the objections: "Our drives have X storage space. No one is going to buy one with half the storage capacity, even if it is smaller and cheaper." No one gets excited about small sales when they are facing big ones with their current product line. So the technology's strategic value is overlooked, and the innovation ends up being capitalized upon by smaller competitors who can plant and grow an emerging market because they get excited about smaller volume sales. They have the energy and drive to find markets that don't necessarily need the rich feature set associated with the current product. Inevitably, of course, these smaller sales dwarf the originating technology and its associated marketing and sales efforts, by cannibalizing the market and becoming the mainstream product. Clayton's book outlines excellent strategies for companies seeking to capitalize upon disruptive technologies developed within their walls. They make sense, and are easy to grasp. In all, one of the better books I've read, in terms of short and long term impact to my ability to present solution. Well worth the money.
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Summary: A must read for any big company
Review: Clayton Christensen finds an answer that many people have been looking for. Why is it that big companies always seem to miss the wave for the next big thing in their business? Why did IBM miss the minicomputer invasion? Why did DEC miss the PC wave? His answer seems simple but yet rings true. The correct way for companies to handle sustaining technologies will cause them to fail when they meet what he calls disruptive technologies. The right way to conduct business will cause them to miss the wave. The author gives many empirical examples to justify his theory and then gives ideas for how to avoid the trap. He also gives examples of companies who followed his advice and survived.
The only question I was left with was how to determine if a new technology is disruptive or worthless? Christensen describes how to behave once you have identified a disruptive technology but not how to identify it. Still, this book is a must read for anyone who works at a big company.
Rating:
Summary: Seeming Irrationality and Corporate Cassandras
Review: Christensen is a Karl Marx of change: "Innovators of the world, unite!" could easily be the subtitle of a very readable book.
The thesis is that change comes as a surprise to those who have enjoyed success. The old business saying, "whom the gods would destroy, they first give 40 years of success," applies here. High profits, and entrenched customer and supplier communities can thwart change, until it is too late.
Using the disk drive industry as his first case study (because, he writes, like fruit flies, the average company life cycle is so short), Christensen examines how, when a new technology came along, the company housing the innovators failed to capitalize, with only the rarest exceptions. The paradigm discovered by Christensen is that of the value network. Companies have scarce resources for which there are alternate uses: Common sense dictates that they be directed to satisfying the demands of current, paying customers, and not be diverted to risky projects for markets that either do not yet exist, or which are low-profit. Research and development continue in their established courses and product cycles, and at some point, the product may have excess value - performance than the average user needs, but for which they must pay, if they but the product.
The result of this eminently rational decision-making process is that when a new product establishes itself, it is usually the work of a start-up company, which has little to lose and is willing to accept lower profits than mainline companies will, or can. (Cost structure in bigger firms may make low-end products unprofitable.) At some point, the rising product becomes good enough to substitute for the established one. At this point, crisis looms. The expertise, experience, and momentum are with the upstarts. The replacement process is likened to a tornado, wherein only a few use the new product at first, but as its' capabilities cross the threshold of minimum utility for the mass market, a sudden whirlwind of change happens, and seemingly overnight, the mainlines have lost control of the market. The mainline companies may choose to cede the bottom end of the market to their rivals, and focus on the upscale, highly profitable segments. This Christensen relates in telling of the rise of Nucor Steel and other minimills as challengers to US Steel and other giants of industry.
The Nucors started out only working the bottom of the steel market: "Rebar" steel, low-tech and low-profit. As they advanced on the learning curve, they moved upmarket, into Big Sttel's remaining baliwicks. At each juncture, better business models and lower cost structure allowed innovative technology to help the upstarts capture market share. At each stage, Big Steel retreated, and by concentrating on only the highest-end, lucrative parts of the market, and masked their decline (even to themselves)with record profits. Only when the minimills came knocking on the door for their last market did they wake up and start playing serious catch-up.
The lesson in all of this, retold in a page-turner style suitable for light summer reading, is that radical change is seldom accomplished by those on top - it comes from the outside. Vested interests, within and without the organization, will fight for their budgets, their turf, and for their status. Only top management buy-in, the continual dedication of resources, and, optimally, setting up a seperate entity to innovate the radical (as opposed to incremental) change process holds real hope for success. (GM setting up Saturn as a wholly-owned but otherwise independent company is an example.)
One of the interesting points that the author makes is how, at some point, products may become commodities, and brand names lose influence, relative to price, in driving sales. Looking ahead, if this process begins to happen, one can expect that substitution with cheaper alternatives is not far away. (Linux' rise vis a vis Windows may be the beginning of this process in the PC Operating System market.)
This model has application far outside the business world. One can think of many examples, such as generals preparing to fight the last war, while innovators, like Erwin Rommel or Billy Mitchell, develop the weapons and tactics that will win the next one. One can see it in politics, where major parties have ignored culture and immigration as issues, only to find Pat Buchannan, the late Pim Fortuyn, and others making it their signature issues. If Christensen's model applies, them the rise to power of third parties will follow, unless established ones move quickly to co-opt their issues, at the risk of offending their current constituencies. Gary North (linkable through lwerockwell.com) wrote a column that described the rise of Methodism and Baptist churches in early America. His explanation parallels what Christensen wrote regarding the disk drive, excavator, and steel industries: lower fixed costs (lay preachers vs. seminiary-trained ministers), an unexploited market (frontier settlements vs. back East), and a product that could be substituted for its extablished competitor (mainline churches), led to sudden growth and market capture. Other examples will occur to the reader, which is part of the electricity of this book - it stimulates the mind to apply its' teachings elsewhere. "The Innovator's Dilemma" is well worth your time.<
-Lloyd A. Conway
Rating:
Summary: Great analysis of the dilemma
Review: The author explains the innovator's dilemma in true Harvard style with case studies. And many of them. He addresses all the key issues about the dilemma, starting with the difference between sustaining & disruptive technologies. He explains how a company may identify a disruptive technology coming on and how it can best strategize with its resources, values & processes to handle the new technology most effectively. He takes the reader through detailed case studies of several industries -- disk drives, excavators, minimills, etc. He also provides specific examples of companies that have dealt with such changes in the past -- IBM, HP, Apple, etc. His analysis of companies that have proven themselves successful through a wave of disruptive technology provides insights about what a company must do differently ... in terms of managing its resources, processes and values. He also compares first-to-market consequences for both disruptive & sustaining technologies. Having worked for both a big company & a startup myself, I can appreciate the differences between the two establishments and how each would deal with technology changes (sustaining or disruptive). He does a great job of explaining how companies could fail by doing all the "right" things -- listening to customers, planning a certain growth rate, projecting demand, etc. He explains how customers could adopt a completely different technology overnight leaving companies in the lurge. This book is not just about the tech industry -- it offers insights on how companies can effectively deal with changing technologies. If you have ever wondered what it takes for a company to be constantly on top of things, and how some companies seamlessly adopt new technologies while keeping their customers happy and their financial goals right-on, this book is for you.
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