The Innovator's Dilemma

This is perhaps the best-known book on innovation inside large companies. When discussing technological change, people have mentioned it to me more than any other book—by a large margin! It includes examples from industries ranging from hard disks to excavators and even offers an earlier look at the prospects for electric vehicles.

It is especially interesting to see how past success can lead to complacency that hinders sustained growth and financial health. In the process, Christensen underscores how important it is for companies to continue innovating within—even when business is going well and even when acquisitions seem alluring and less… show more.

Successful companies almost always struggle to deal with the threats posed by new technologies. They fail to recognize the dangers posed by new entrants, and they are slow to move to the “next big thing.”

I think Christenson wrote THE seminal book on this topic and gave me the tools to understand this from both a theoretical and practical perspective. 

I hate the way people toss around the term, disruption, to describe everything under the sun, neutering the value of the term in describing why disruption matters. Christensen’s book relies on empirical research, not hyperbole, to describe what makes innovations disruptive and why many companies fail to respond to disruptive innovations. I use the book and a series of Harvard Business Review articles co-authored by Christensen in one of my classes as a way to help my students understand the unique challenges of marketing disruptive innovations. Inevitably, the students who resist the concepts the most are the ones who write… show more.

In this book, Professor Clayton Christensen explores the puzzle of why seemingly well-run companies fail. He shares many examples of companies that are well-managed, listen to their customers, act on market trends, and invest in R&D – i.e. appear to do all the right things – and yet fail. The Innovator’s Dilemma lays out why established companies often fail at disruptive technologies and how to tackle the inherent challenges. Disruptive technologies are technologies that underperform existing products in mainstream markets and have features that a few fringe customers value. They are often ignored by well-run companies precisely because their customers… show more.

Disruption is a celebrated essence in entrepreneurial circles. The disruptive technologies behind, say, Uber, that transformed society’s acceptance of ride-sharing, or Airbnb and short-term home rentals, changed the way we live, and created entirely new categories and great fortunes. In The Innovator’s Dilemma, Christensen exposes the full nature of disruptive technologies; where they come from, why they upend industry leaders, and what companies can do to recognize and harness significant new innovations. It is the owner’s manual for creating disruptive, entrepreneurial success.