Customer Reviews

The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business

5 star:		(27)
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3 star:		(4)
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1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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.

The Innovator's Dilemma presents the idea that even if you do everything right, you can still be wrong if you don't see what's coming. unfortunately, that all depends on what you can see. In this case Christensen's hindsight is 20/20 and he can say "Of course they didn't see it coming." The problem is applying this to modern business. That said, it does present a very interesting way of looking at disruptive technology changes, and how sometimes you just aren't in a position to do anything unless you scrap everything and go from there. Much of his case relies on the hard drive industry, which he has some good quantitative data to work with. At the same time, it is some of his other examples, with backhoes, and steel mills that can illustrate his concept to a greater extent. Part of this is because while computer componants is a fast moving field, it is these more lumbering machine parts area that scream "steady as it goes." Thus his thesis is stronger. It is almost too bad that the newest version is only updated and with a new chapter. Much of his computer hard drive case is only through 1996 - a lifetime ago in terms of technology changes. I would have been fascinated to see him revisit his data and see what it shows. Granted, that would be a complete rewrite of his book, but something that is so groundbreaking as this requires more thorough updating. Overall it is a very good and though provoking book that makes you think. Will it help you catch the next wave and survive the disruption? I am not sure I can say I took that away with me.

The material in this book is fairly obvious; if you have Christensen's papers from HBR and have taken any advanced marketing class, his book is just a repetitive rehash of this stuff. For the novice marketer, and one who hasn't been exposed to "disruptive" technologies and their impacts, this book may be more fulfilling. Otherwise, read his seminal paper in HBR entitled "Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave." If you're an academic or one who loves to study the fundamentals intricacies of this stuff - read the whole thing. Otherwise, it's just more cloud for your brain and more ammo for your boss to ask, "What the hell are you talking about? Get to work."

Clayton Christensen breaks technology developments into two groups. "Sustaining" technology improvements are those which seem to be in line with the needs of the current customers. The "Disruptive" technology developments are those which don't immediately seem to meet the established customer's demands. The basic problem is that often the large companies get blindsided by disruptive technology, and they either don't react, or react too late. Normally someone will figure out a slightly new market for the disruptive technology, improve the basic process, drive down the costs, and then go after the more established markets.

Clayton shows how this model applies to a number of different industries over the last hundred years. He has a lot of hard data from the Disk Drive industry, but he mentions a number of other industries which underwent fundamental changes, and shows how the old companies were not able to adapt to the changes.

"The Innovator's Dilemma" and "Crossing the Chasm" go well together. They are addressing many of the same issues from different perspectives. Clayton Christensen is looking at changes in the market place from the point of view of the large established companies, while Geoffrey A. Moore is coming from the other direction, that of a small startup company with some new cool technology. Clayton is more concerned with technology, while Geoffrey is focused on more on marketing issues.

This is a very well written book, good for anyone in business. It reads well, and I found it very thought provoking. There are a lot of good ideas here.

Not quite as easy to read as I would have liked. Christensen describes some very interesting & plausible theories, but is somewhat confined into employing the computer disk industry as the rapidly changing example which both demonstrates & proves his theories, and its not necessarily the most exciting case material. Other products only get a minor look-in.

What I did like is how he covers the footnotes at the end of each Chapter - so if they don't interest you, you can skip over them, but if they do interest you, then you don't have to struggle to the back of the book. I wish more authors & publishers would use that technique.

One quibble - given his Economics background - of course there are plenty of graphs, and 99% of them are straight lines - there are no time dependent variances in his world.

Read this before you read the Innovators Solution.

Clay Christensen combines the science of empirical research with the art of organizational behavior in his best-selling "The Innovator's Dilemma." The book provides tangible advice on how to foster innovation within a corporate environment. His case studies draw from the successes and failures of American companies within numerous industries (disk drives, excavators, motorcycles, software). Christensen's strong points include a creative presentation of data, lucid writing and frank admission that the advice in his book is not a one-size-fits-all panacea for management challenges. But a heads-up to readers: perhaps 50% of the book centers on the disk-drive manufacturing industry. Although the lessons learned in hard drives are interesting, a more balanced approach would have been welcome. "The Innovators Dilemma" is a well written management how-to, in the same league as classics by Peters or Hammer. The book seems to be written for managers in large organizations, but entrepreneurs will probably find the material just as beneficial.

This was a fantastic book. I began reading it less than half way through the MBA program I am in and I was amazed at how many of the arguments others were making in class fell apart. This book helped me better analyze several aspects of many of my classes and I only wish I would have read it sooner.

I continued on and read the Innovator's Solution, and while I thought it was also a good book, I got much more out of the Innovator's Dilemma, though I still recommend both of them.

What more can be said about this book that hasn't already? Even an individual contributing developer like myself in a non-management role benefits from it, as there are great examples of how new products move from niche to mainstream and upset their competitors. After reading it, you should understand why it's so dangerous to keep your head down and *only* listen to your current and up-market growth customers.

The only downside to the book is the lack of practical advice on how to avoid being out-innovated, and Christensen's follow-on book, _The Innovator's Solution_, nicely addresses even that.

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.