It is a pleasure to welcome a great friend of Clay Christensen, yet another soul deeply touched by the man, the author of “Stall points” and author of the 2014 paper, The Capitalist’s Dilemma, Derek van Bever.
Today’s book is a book about progress.
Yes, it’s a book about innovation—and how to get better at it.
But at its core, this book is about the struggles we all face to make progress in our lives.
If you’re like many entrepreneurs and managers, the word “progress” might not spring to mind when you’re trying to innovate.
Sports Academies are like Innovation and Incubation Labs
Karen Dillon joins us to share concepts from her book How Will You Measure you Life co-authored with her friend, Clay Christensen
“Butterflies, for all their graces, are merely caterpillars who persevere.” Guillaume Apollinaire, Honda and the emergent strategy in America.
The Innovator’s Solution summarises a set of theories that can guide managers who need to grow new businesses with predictable success—to become the disruptors rather than the disruptees—and ultimately kill the well-run, established competitors. To succeed predictably, disruptors must be good theorists. As they shape their growth business to be disruptive, they must align every critical process and decision to fit the disruptive circumstance.
Apoptosis provides a fitting metaphor for what must happen in organisations to survive continuous cycles of change. Rather than letting the entire organisation die, the corporate body’s sectors, departments, and business units must regularly renew, just like a human body. Like any healthy process, the end of one cycle is the beginning of another, and it is better to embrace this law than to resist it. Easier said than done.
Using the rational, analytical investment processes that most well-managed companies have developed, it is nearly impossible to build a logical case for diverting resources from known customer needs in established markets to markets and customers that seem insignificant or do not yet exist.
Clark G. Gilbert on Clayton Christensen, “Dual Transformation” and “From Resource Allocation to Strategy”
Discovery-Driven Planning with Rita Gunther McGrath The Clayton Christensen Tribute