“Butterflies, for all their graces, are merely caterpillars who persevere.” Guillaume Apollinaire, Honda and the emergent strategy in America.
The Innovatorās Solution summarises a set of theories that can guide managers who need to grow new businesses with predictable successāto become the disruptors rather than the disrupteesāand 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.
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 āFrom Resource Allocation to Strategyā
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, āThere is nothing in the caterpillar that tells you it will be a butterfly.āĀ
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 Christensenās 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,
āDisruptive Technologies: Catching the Waveā that preceded the Innovatorās 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 peopleās motivations differ very much.
“Many of us are living a very narrow life; we have self-inflicted blinkers on. Widen your view, widen your mind, widen your life.ā ā Marcus Aurelius
The information we absorb dramatically impacts how we perceive the world.