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.
The paper I wanted to share today aims to provide a common language about the research process that helps management scholars spend less time defending the style of research they have chosen and build more effectively on each other’s work.
I felt this series on Clayton Christensen’s work and theories would be incomplete without this episode.
It is a great pleasure to welcome the co-author of that paper and a person who has built on this work considerably, Paul Carlile.
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
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, “There is nothing in the caterpillar that tells you it will be a butterfly.”
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 Christensen’s 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,
“Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave” that preceded the Innovator’s 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
How do you maintain the message of your company vision across generations?
In The Brain-Friendly Workplace, Friederike Fabritius highlights the basic fact that we need more thought diversity and that people’s motivations differ very much.