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.
The Innovatorâs Solution summarises a set of theories that can guide managers who need to grow new businesses with predictable successâto become the disruptors rather than the disrupteesâand 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.
Discovery-Driven Planning with Rita Gunther McGrath The Clayton Christensen Tribute
As Clayton Christensen reiterated throughout his work, capable managers do not become incapable overnight; they act in what they believe is in the best interests of the organisation they serve. For the executives in Western Union, there was simply no way they could have anticipated that the telephone would ever get good enough to be a competitive threat. As the great innovator Buckminster Fuller said, âThere is nothing in the caterpillar that tells you it will be a butterfly.âÂ
Joseph L. Bower is the father of Resource Allocation theory included in his 1970 groundbreaking book, Managing the Resource Allocation Process.
He has been a leader in general management at Harvard Business School for over 5 decades where he is the Donald K. David Professor Emeritus.
He was Clayton Christensenâs doctoral thesis adviser and worked with Clay to develop and stress test his theories.
He is with us today to recognise his friend and revisit that famous 1995 article,
âDisruptive Technologies: Catching the Waveâ that preceded the Innovatorâs Dilemma
In a way this episode is a prequel to part one.
It is a great honour to welcome for the hour or Bower: Professor Joseph L. Bower
“Many of us are living a very narrow life; we have self-inflicted blinkers on. Widen your view, widen your mind, widen your life.â â Marcus Aurelius
The information we absorb dramatically impacts how we perceive the world.
Alex Osterwalder offers an understanding of the Explore-Exploit Continuum will help executives and innovation teams put in place the right investment and management processes, the required skill set and culture to explore new business ideas as successfully as they exploit current businesses.
Co-author of “Eat Sleep Innovate”, Paul Cobban, shares the importance of reframing your competitive set and the concept of MOJO Meetings and Wreckoon.