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Summary: Awful!
Review: This could hardly make enough material for a 2-pager. I can't believe people rate this as excellent. I want what the rest of them are smoking.
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Summary: Good on the subject, better if it was simply an article
Review: The book is well researched and written to effectively educate on that information. Some chapters go into excruciating detail. You may realize after reading 1/3 of the book that the rest is innocuous. This would make (and perhaps did make) a fine HBR article. It is excessive as a book.
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Summary: Highly Recommended
Review: Great book. Highly recommended reading on why large technology companies are often unable to win against startups.Also recommended: 'The Slingshot Syndrome: Why America's Leading Technology Firms Fail at Innovation' by Reid M. Watts
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Summary: Interesting theory for big company innovations
Review: This book focuses on new product ideas at big enterprises and how they should be pursued. If there is no current market for these new products and naturally no customer base, these technologies are called disruptive technologies.
And Christensen is telling us, the only way to make these new product technologies successful is to spin off a new division and treat it like a startup with corporate financial backing.
His studies show that the corporations that do not follow this rules have always failed.
I recommend this book to product managers, senior engineers at big corporations with new product ideas. This book should be helpful to define a strategy to form the idea into a commercially viable product or service.
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Summary: Un classique
Review: Un livre passionant pour les européens, même de langue francaise!
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Summary: Exploring a Multi-Dimensional Paradox
Review: Having just re-read this book, I admire it even more now than I did when it was first published. In his Introduction, Christensen makes his objective crystal clear: "This book is about the failure of companies 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." Why? For Christensen, the answer is revealed in what he calls "the innovator's dilemma": 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. In Part One, Chapters 1-4, Christensen builds a framework that explains why sound decisions by great managers can lead to failure. In Part Two, Chapters 5-10, he attempts to resolve the dilemma by examining why and under what circumstances new technologies have caused great firms to fail. He makes an important distinction between sustaining technologies and those which are disruptive. He offers four "laws or principles" of disruptive technology: #1: Companies depend on customers and investors for resources (Chapter 5) #2: Small markets don't solve the growth needs of large companies (Chapter 6) #3: Markets that don't exist can't be analyzed (Chapter 7) #4: Technology supply may not equal market demand (Chapter 8) Actually, these four could also be viewed as guidelines as well as check-points by which to detect early-warning danger signs. Unless and until, however, it becomes obvious that a given technology will create sustaining rather than only temporary disruption. One of the book's most important points seems to confirm what Pogo the Possum once said: "We have met the enemy and he is us." Nearly all of the corporate wounds which Christensen examines are self-inflicted. If not in all instances avoidable, at least the damage done could at least have been reduced. For example, Christensen examines companies in which (a) disruptive technologies were first developed internally, (b) marketing personnel then sought reactions from lead customers, (c) the pace of sustaining technological development was accelerated, (d) disaffected employees created new companies and (by trial and error) located markets for disruptive technology, (e) moved upmarket in direct competition, and (f) caused established firms to respond in defense of their own customer base. In essence, well-established companies ("incumbents") thus become threatened by "entrants" and a disruptive technology change. In response, they re-allocate resources away from those technologies which address their customers' needs. When reading this book, note in particular Christensen's detailed analysis of a disruptive technological change in the mechanical excavator industry (Chapter Three) and the correlations between value networks and characteristic cost structures (Chapter Four). Once again, he reveals how and why sound management decisions can often be "at the very root of [a 'good' company's] impending fall from industry leadership." In Part Two, Christensen describes in detail HOW managers can address and harness four principles by which to prevail against disruptive technologies. Once again, he asserts that a company's customers effectively control what it can and cannot do. Managers who deny or ignore this do so at great peril. To support his assertion, Christensen examines several quite different companies: Quantum, Plus Development, Control Data, Micropolis, DEC, IBM, Kresge, Woolworth, and Hewlett-Packard. In some of these companies, the innovating managers who were faced with disruptive technologies created organizations whose cost structures enabled them to make money in the value network where the disruptive technology was taking root, and where customers' power and the managers' intentions were aligned. The emphasis is on alignment. In Chapter Six, Christensen insists that managers must be leaders, not followers, in commercializing disruptive change. Hence the importance of a strategic decision: To be a leader or a follower? It is often prudent for "incumbents" to be followers, resisting pressure from customers, until opportunities to commercialize disruptive technologies are sufficient and appropriate. As Christensen suggests, "In sustaining technologies, in fact, evidence strongly suggests that companies which focus on extending the performance of conventional technologies, and choose to be followers in adopting new ones, can remain strong and competitive." Chapter Ten summarizes various key points. By now Christensen has offered dozens of examples of "some very capable executives in some extraordinarily successful companies, using the best managerial techniques, who have led their firms toward failure." Lest this brief commentary suggest otherwise, managers in every organization (regardless of size or nature) eventually must resolve "the innovator's dilemma." Christensen's book provides invaluable assistance to completing that immensely difficult process. It remains for each of his readers to answer questions such as these: Which customers do we want? Which technologies will help us to get and then keep them? For each technology, which strategies will be most effective to sustain it? Should we attack competitors with disruptive technology? How can we best defend ourselves against it? How should our resources be allocated? What about timing? Should we lead or follow? If we follow, should we prepare to lead later? Finding the correct (i.e. most appropriate) answers to questions such as these will obviously help to clarify today's realities and to suggest strategies for an uncertain future. But beware of taking anyone or anything for granted. As Christensen explains so eloquently and compellingly, the process of resolving one major dilemma may well reveal others. Hence the importance of alertness, speed, flexibility, and (yes) passion.
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Summary: Original and Important Thinking on Tech Business Strategy
Review: REVIEW: The author's key theme (my oversimplification) is that new technologies can be separated into "sustaining technologies" (for improving established products)and "disruptive technologies" (fundamentially new products or markets) and that while established firms do an excellent job at exploiting sustaining technologies, disruptive technologies often cause them to stumble and lose leadership. The book explores the reasons why this has ocurred despite the established firms having good management and following good management practices. For those who are Peter Drucker fans, I believe Christensen has independently found and expanded upon two Drucker concepts in a fresh and original way. The Drucker concepts embedded here include: (1) key changes always start with a company's non-customers and (2) the "new" (e.g. a company's new products) should be developed separately from the old, should be sheltered, and should not bear the same burdens as the company's established products. The book is based on solid research and is well written. Highly recommended for those interested in high-tech manufacturing business strategy. STRENGTHS: The book is organized very well giving the reader the option of a quick read or a detailed read. For example, there is an excellent introduction that summarizes the main points of the book. Also, each chapter has detailed footnotes allowing the reader to go deeper into the material if desired. The book has plenty of case studies and graphics to illustrate key concepts. WEAKNESSES: The book has a bit of an academic feel and is not written in a casual way as found in many popular business books. This didn't bother me as I found the content first rate and very interesting. WHO SHOULD READ THIS BOOK: Exectives responsible for strategy in technology product companies. ALSO CONSIDER: Andrew Grove - Only the Paranoid Survive; Peter Drucker - Management Challenges for the 21st Century; Michael Porter - On Competition [feedback welcome]
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Summary: What is the Innovator's Dilemma?
Review: In The Innovator's dilemma, Clayton Christensen describes the dynamics by which some of the largest, most successful companies in America fail due to "good" management. In his analysis, firms that dedicate themselves to listening to and serving their customers the best, place themselves most at risk for future failures as they are overtaken by smaller upstart competitors with innovative technologies. The Innovator's Dilemma makes a compelling argument based on the author's study of the computer disk drive industry. Disk drive manufacturing was chosen for its frequent turnover of technology and competitors in a relatively short timespan. Cristensen places technological innovations in two categories: sustaining and disruptive. Sustaining innovations are those that help sustain an organization's existing customer base by improving the performance, capacity, reliability, or value of an existing product technology. Disruptive innovations produce products that are technologically inferior from the perspective of a firm's existing customer base. Disruptive products, however, may include improvements that, while unimportant to the existing market, hold potential for new and emerging markets. Christensen uses the example of the introduction of small 50cc Honda motorcycles in the late 1950's. From the perspective of the existing motorcycle market at the time, the Honda was inferior compared to larger, more powerful motorcycles such as Harley Davidson and BMW. Honda found a niche, however, as a dirt bike - an emerging market that had not been explored by other manufacturers but was ideally suited for a small, inexpensive motorcycle. Once a market is established for a disruptive technology, it can then evolve into the mainstream and become technologically improved to the point of competing with and eventually overtaking existing mainstream technologies. In the case of Honda, once a market was established, small motorcycles were technologically improved to the point of appealing to a mass market rather than just dirt bike enthusiasts. Organizations overlook disruptive technologies for a variety of reasons. Often, larger organizations listen to their existing customers and what is important to them, overlooking small, emerging markets. The innovator's dilemma is that at the time disruptive technologies are introduced, mainstream companies are often wildly successful marketing their sustaining technology to existing customers. Investing in disruptive technology necessitates a diversion of resources away from the organization's most profitable activities that its customers are asking for, toward an unproven technology with a small, uncertain market. Disruptive technologies are often not as cost effective to manufacture or sell when they are viewed from the perspective of existing markets. Small 3.5 inch disk drives, for example, initially cost more per megabyte of capacity compared to larger 5.25 inch drives while, and they had less overall capacity Although they were not attractive to desktop computer manufactures, they represented a cost effective solution to the needs of the emerging mobile computer market where size was more important than large capacity. Citing examples from a number of industries, Christensen makes the point that traditional business planning works well for established markets and sustaining technologies. In the case of disruptive technologies, however, he argues that strategy should be based on discovery of new opportunities and that individuals working on the development and marketing of disruptive technologies should be organizationally separate. Overall, the Innovator's Dilemma is a concise, well written book in which the author is able to effectively convey a technically complex study on a technically complex industry. Overall, the Innovator's Dilemma should be required reading for anyone in an business planning role.
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Summary: The Value of Noncompliance
Review: In a short (270 pages) text, Professor Christensen provides us with a lucid explanation of the hazards of conventional thinking when faced with developing markets for goods or services. Christensen points out that unthinking compliance with the managerial practices that allowed success in established markets can often lead to ruin in emerging markets. New realities create new truths. His is a cogent argument for thinking and acting "outside of the box," at appropriate times and under appropriate conditions, to create the conditions that breed success in new circumstances. In a constantly evolving world, leaders in all markets will want to read this book to open their minds to new possibilities, and broaden their horizons.
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Summary: It ends where it should begin
Review: Clayt Christensen= Mr. Disruptive Innovation. No doubt. He has made his point in management theory; the business as usual approach of established companies is their handicap with disruptive innovations. Although his framework to explain the struggle of established companies and innovation is very useful the book doesn't get into the question; 'how to deal with disruptive innovation' ? i recommend you read 'the innovators dilemma' in combination with books like 'corporate venturing', 'radical innovation' or 'webs of innovation' that go on where christensen ends. however overall this is an absolute must read to understand the struggle of established companies and (disruptive) innovation
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