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.


In Praise of a Disruptive Innovation Theory   October 9, 2003
 86 out of 96 found this review helpful

The first two chapters of this book are so well thought out and beautifully written that reading them literally made my muscles ache and toes curl. I've never had that strong a reaction to any portion of a business book before.

The Innovator's Solution builds on Professor Christensen's landmark book, The Innovator's Dilemma, and explains how managers can overcome the bias he described in the earlier book toward being blindsided by new entrants bringing disruptive technology and products to bear.

There's so much good material in The Innovator's Solution that it is hard to fairly summarize it.

Let me attempt to give you an overview. The authors point out, based on the studies of others, that few large companies are able to grow faster than average. Worse still for managers, they point out that studies of those few which have grown faster are often contradictory in their findings. Best practices may be nothing more than an accidental reaction to a temporary situation. The authors go on to create a generalized theory of what needs to be done in every situation that a company may face in creating and responding to disruptive technologies and products. It's as though Michael Porter had taken his tomes on competitive advantage and provided a single theory for when to apply what. As such, this is one of the most advanced books for creating management processes for using disruptive technologies and business models to discomfit the competition in profitable ways.

Appreciating Figure 2-3 on page 44 is worth the price of the book alone. The authors have created a graphic to explain how markets develop in growth and competitive characteristics. No one who ever sees this graphic depiction will ever think about competitive and development strategies in the same way again.

Although the authors use examples from many different industries, the most detailed and compelling examples come from technology based companies and industries. I found the Sony examples particularly interesting for their repeated creation of new markets and business models.

The book beautifully elaborates on the thinking processes that companies use to lose competitive advantage . . . and should help many leaders counter these wrong-headed thoughts and instincts.

Why, then, does the book have so much theory? As the authors candidly point out at the end, there are few models for what they are proposing. As a result, they have cobbled together a theory from bits and pieces of concepts that appeal to them and seem to fit with one another. Only with experience can we tell how good this theory is. But it's worth understanding and considering.

The authors seem to have missed the bulk of the examples of companies that have made continuing business model innovations in the last decade. That appears to be because they relied on the published literature prior to 2003 to find examples, rather than doing their own research from scratch. Since continuing business model innovators are seldom written about by academics and consultants, these are a little hard to find. A large number of such innovators appear in service industries, which are relatively little mentioned in The Innovator's Solution. Surprisingly, many continuing business model innovators in software, semiconductors, computer components and medical testing are missing from the book. I suspect that the proposed theory could have been much improved by considering these cases. I look forward to seeing what the authors have to say in the future as they look at more cases.

Without attempting to know if the theories are right or not, I can mention my own subjective reactions. The authors seem to be overly focused on products as compared to business models. It is helpful to use both perspectives as starting points for strategic thinking. Analyzing customer behavior by considering what job customers are trying to do seems to me to be much too simplistic. The most disruptive products, technologies and business models have often created changes in behavior where customers do things for the first time. On the other hand, the points made about how to beat the most powerful competitors, selecting the right target customers, scoping the business correctly, avoiding commoditization, managing strategic development, working with the right sources and amounts of funding, and the role of senior executives struck me as more often on the mark than not based on my own research and experiences. Any of the chapters except chapter 3 would probably make helpful reading for just about anyone.

Don't be put off by the authors' emphasis on theory. They are trying to help make you more practical . . . not more abstract. Think of their theory as being like an operating manual for a new product. You may get better results by having clear instructions rather than relying totally on trial and error.

I was extremely impressed by the gracious and thorough acknowledgments in the book of the thinking and research of others. Even when the authors point out the extreme weaknesses and limitations of a particular piece of work, they praise the positive aspects of that work in kind and thoughtful ways. I cannot remember the last time I read an academic book that took such a considerate approach.

After you finish this book, I suggest that you think through how you can inexpensively create a better and more effective balance between creating the industries of the future and optimizing the businesses of today. Your stakeholders will thank you.


Another Fad Business Book   November 28, 2003
 69 out of 120 found this review helpful

Alas for those of us who exist in the real world. It is demonstrably untrue that most of the major companies in the industry lost their leads to their competition because of "disruptive" technology. 32-bit OS/2 lost to a 16-bit shell riding on top of an 8-bit OS core (Windows 3.X). You might claim the PC was a "disruptive" system, but Dell is certainly no innovator, nor was Compaq nor was Gateway nor were any of the cloners. They just were more efficient manufacturers, hardly a disruptive "technology." Novell did not lose to NT because NT was disruptive; it lost because it actively discouraged third-party application development and refused to add a GUI to NetWare years after it was clear people wanted one. The Mac was "disruptive" yet a second-rate imitation ended up owning the GUI roost. MicroPro once owned word processing but failed because of an internal positioning war. Ashton-Tate crashed and burned because of a PR fiasco. WordPerfect introduced a stinker of a Windows product just as the market was turning to Windows because the head of the company didn't want to force his best programmers to leave their DOS code bases. CA has flourished by buying dying mainframe companies and milking installed bases. Borland nearly died by pursuing object-oriented programming, arguably a disruptive technology, and held up releases of its core products while it innovated itself into irrelevance. What does any of this have to do with disruption?

The disk drive industry the authors used in "Dilemma" is not very disruptive; rather, it represents an industry that makes steady incremental progress on an underlying technology that has not changed since the 60's; spinning platters coated in metal oxides over which a metal boom rides reading data from magnetically charged particles. This has always been a commodity-driven industry, margins are intrinsically slim, and the key to success is managing the inventory flow as you move to a next generation of smaller, more densely packed platters. A well-run company can handle this and continue to make money at a nice clip if its internal business processes are geared to do this efficiently; Intel is the prime example.

Is the Pentium 4 a "disruptive" chip? Hardly, but it makes Intel a lot of money! Is the Opteron more disruptive? Probably, but is AMD rolling in dough? Nope.

Going back in time, was the 8086 more disruptive than the Motorola 68000? Nope. Who won that war? Intel. How? Crush, a marketing and sales program. Is this an example of "disruptive" technology?

People continue to fall for these fad theories which simply don't track back to events as they actually occurred.


Certain to Become a Business "Classic"   September 25, 2003
 37 out of 42 found this review helpful

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.


Understands the problem but not the solution. Impractical.   January 17, 2004
 26 out of 35 found this review helpful

This book makes a prescription. It's a pretty simple one. Make sure innovation happens. Hire people to cannibalize the business you are in. Back those people. I will say flatly it is simple-minded.

Another strategy is for a company to get in on disruptive technologies by participating in a venture capital pool in their sector. That's an insurance policy, and a win-win all the way around. They can get a look at what is coming at them and so they can make plans for what the future life of their current line is likely to be - invaluable business intelligence. If the competition is really a disrupter, they get the big payoff from their venture capital investment. Heads they win, tails they win.

This book has a good description of how things work, but the prescription isn't terribly useful. It indicates just how lacking in real world experience Mr. Raynor is.