We are joined by the former CEO of Cypress Semiconductor, TJ Rodgers and his friend and author of Lead and Disrupt, Charles OâReilly III
Businesses throw Hail Marys when encountering a crisis, such as declining sales or disruptive innovation, or technology suddenly upends their business plan. Equally, leaders throw Hail Marys to meet analyst expectations when they have been coasting in the game for a long time. In sports, there is a thin line between arrogance and confidence, and business organisations often fall into the success trap.
In today’s business world of flux, explore units are agile, decentralised, experimental cultures, loose work processes, strong entrepreneurial and technical competencies, and relatively young and neurodiverse employees. In contrast to the exploit units, these small entrepreneurial units are inefficient, rarely profitable, and have no established histories. They often deliberately violate the norms valued in older parts of the organization.
Because the explore units are wildly different from the exploit incumbent, explorers are often undermined by the parent company, whose short-term needs override exploration. While the exploit teams win in the short term, they sink the company in the long.
Leaders must rightsize the organisation for their current reality when confronting change, a difficult task, as Kodak discovered.
It is a pleasure to welcome a great friend of Clay Christensen, yet another soul deeply touched by the man, the author of âStall pointsâ and author of the 2014 paper, The Capitalistâs Dilemma, Derek van Bever.
Clayton Christensen mentored Bob Moesta, and they became fast friends. Bob was one of the principal architects of the Jobs To Be Done theory. He expands on the theory and shares his respect for his friend Clay.
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
Clayton M. Christensen and Michael B. Hornâs âDisrupting Classâ is an unsettling title for a book about the schooling process.
The title conveys multiple meanings.
The principal message is that disruption can usefully frame why schools have struggled to improve and how to solve these problems.
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.