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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.4063
EAN num: 9781578518524
ISBN number: 1578518520
Label: Harvard Business School Press
Manufacturer: Harvard Business School Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 288
Printing Date: 2003-09
Publishing house: Harvard Business School Press
Sale Popularity Level: 15243
Studio: Harvard Business School Press
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The Growth Paradox
At best one company in ten is able to sustain profitable growth. Yet capital markets demand that all companies seek it relentlessly and mercilessly punish those who fail. Why is consistent, persistent growth so difficult to achieve? Surprisingly, it’s not for lack of great ideas or capable managers, nor is it because customers are too fickle or innovation too unpredictable. Innovation fails, say Clayton M. Christensen and Michael E. Raynor, because organizations unwittingly strip the disruptive potential from new ideas before they ever see the light of day.
In his worldwide bestseller The Innovator’s Dilemma, Christensen explained how industry leaders get blindsided by disruptive innovations precisely because they focus too closely on their most profitable customers and businesses. The Innovator’s Solution shows how companies get to the other side of this dilemma, creating disruptions rather than being destroyed by them.
Drawing on years of in-depth research and illustrated by company examples across many industries, Christensen and Raynor argue that innovation can be a predictable process that delivers sustainable, profitable growth. They identify the forces that cause managers to make bad decisions as they package and shape new ideas—and offer new frameworks to help managers create the right conditions, at the right time, for a disruption to succeed. The Innovator’s Solution addresses a wide range of issues, including:
• How can we tell if an idea has disruptive potential?
• Which competitive situations favor incumbents, and which favor entrants?
• Which customer segments are primed to embrace a new offering?
• Which activities should we outsource, and which should we keep in-house?
• How should we structure and fund a new venture?
• How do we choose the right managers to lead it?
• How can we position ourselves where profits will be made in the future?
Revealing counterintuitive insights that will change your perspective on innovation forever, this landmark book shows how to create a disruptive growth engine that fuels ongoing success.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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I assume you're interested in this book because it's a shortcut: we hear that a business can be undermined by [initially] unattractive innovations, aka the innovator's dilemma. But what do we do about it?
The answer is to create those innovations, of course. The proposal is to create small business units, since the initial returns will be small, then make sure they quickly become _profitable_. Even better, create a new market instead of improving an existing product. A crappy sounding transistor radio lets lots of kids listen to music outside their house, compared to the old vacuum tube model that was stuck in the den.
Rated by buyers 
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As CEO of LMS Technical for 28 years, my use of books to help me plan, sustain and improve my business has been a priority. Introduced to this book by my daughter who is presently a student of Christensen, I was skeptical that a "Harvard" read would be too far off the track for a small consulting firm like ours. WRONG! For the past two months, the application of his core beliefs had led our firm to re-direct our postioning and re-think our 2 year goals. A major disruption of delivery of IT network support services is underway in our country. Fed by managed services, and joint global outsourcing arrangements, the industry is being transistioned quickly. It is incredible that the "steel minimills" transistion could be used as an example of how managed services is evolving and how the outcomes could be viewed in the same way. Although the book at very first glance seems complex compared to the typical management help books, the extra time taken to understand his ideas will deliver far greater value than any other book I have read over nearly 3 decades. Aligning ones present goals to his set of theories and really working them will extrude new ideas, and help you test all your past assumptions. My team found itself wondering more about our future, after we understood how we had navigated 28 years of change. Disruption as we understand it now played a major part, but more importantly we now see how it will take us forward. My suggestions for enhancing the book> This is a workbook! providing room for notes, and workspace would be great, my copy now looks like a mess, covered with notes, highlighting, and scribble. It will be my bible going forward.
Rated by buyers -
Clayton Christensen and Michael Raynor set the tone immediately by showing that most companies cannot sustain growth and by explaining to readers how stock markets factor in growth in the price of any publicly-traded stock. Growing faster than what stock markets see now and expect in the future is essential to move up a stock price.
The resource allocation process is the key culprit in humbling many market leaders when dealing with disruptive innovations. That process typically invites up-market flight rather than head-to-head fight with new market entrants. That flight mechanism is applicable not only to product/service makers, but also to their distributors and retailers. Unlike a sustaining innovation, a disruptive innovation is not compatible with the business model of market leaders. Christensen and Raynor call this behavioral pattern asymmetric motivation.
The way out of asymmetric motivation is for the leadership of an established player 1) to frame the disruptive innovation as a threat during the resource allocation process and 2) to shift responsibility for the project to an autonomous organization that has the relevant experience to frame it as an opportunity. The leadership needs to have a clear understanding of the respective impact of resources, processes, and values on what an organization can or cannot accomplish. Resources and processes are often enablers while values often represent constraints. Unlike deliberate processes, emergent processes should dominate when the future is hard to predict and the right strategy is not yet clear. That is especially true at the beginning of a company's existence. Once the winning strategy becomes clear, deliberate processes become a must to maximize the changes of success.
Christensen and Raynor continue their analysis by sub-dividing disruptive innovations into two categories: new-market disruptions competing with "non-consumption" and low-end disruptions that go after the proverbial "low-hanging fruit." Charting the upward path for a new-market disruption is more daunting because nobody has ever walked the walk. In practice, the distinction between the two types of disruptive innovations is not always clear-cut due to the existence of hybrid disruptions that combine new-market and low-end approaches. Christensen and Raynor also point out that an innovation that passes the new-market or low-end test must be disruptive to all of the significant established players to deserve the label of disruptive innovation.
Christensen and Raynor clearly show that new entrants in turn do not escape from the up-market urge. After driving out the last established market player competing in a certain market segment, cut-throat competition forces new entrants to also move up market for greener pastures.
Christensen and Raynor also reflect on why an overwhelming majority of new products fail miserably in the market-place. Attribute-based segmentation for which data are often available is the lead explanation for these failures. That type of market segmentation too often ignores the jobs that people and companies need to get done and how a product or service can be "hired" for that purpose. Targeting a product or service at the circumstances in which the target audience finds itself, rather than at the target itself is the key to success. Christensen and Raynor drive that point home very well with their story about the milkshake doing a different job for a bored commuter and his/her child at different times of the day. Christensen and Raynor blame the counterproductive attribute-based segmentation to 1) fear of focus, 2) senior executives' demand for quantification of opportunities, 3) the structure of channels, and 4) advertising economics and brand strategies.
Christensen and Raynor pursue their analysis by looking at the traditional distinction between core and non-core competences. Unlike competitiveness that is focused on what a customer values, core competence, as it is usually practiced by managers, is ominously inward looking. The rigidity of that categorization results in downplaying the evolving product architectures and integration over time. Christensen and Raynor highlight the respective impact of interdependent architectures that optimize performance in terms of functionality and reliability and modular architectures that optimize flexibility on industry structures.
Dis-integration that modularity makes possible does not preclude re-integration down the road if market circumstances change or vice versa. Savvy managers anticipate where the money will be instead of solely focusing their companies on the profitable businesses of the past. Developing this intuition is essential to avoid the process of commoditization. If commoditization already happens, de-commoditization can be achieved as well. Christensen and Raynor describe both processes ... Read More
Rated by buyers -
Already a business classic, this book does not disappoint. Picking up from where the 'Innovator's Dilemma' left off, Christensen and Raynor examine in detail the barriers towards innovation and growth. Perhaps surprisingly, the concepts discussed are as applicable to large enterprises as they are to one man startups. The problem is one and the same - enterprise readers will learn about the pitfalls of institutionalized processes and sustaining innovation; startup teams will learn how to position their products for future success. Whether you are an aspiring entrepreneur, or a high-ranked executive, 'Innovator's Solution' should be at the top of your reading list.
Rated by buyers -
Exceptional. Who wants their customers to rave about their products and services? Who wants to know "exactly" what your customers need? Who wants to experience revenue growth for their company? If you answered yes to these then the "Innovator's Solution" is a MUST READ. Clayton Christensen and Michael Raynor have taken us back to the fundamental issue facing a company... that being "what job does my product or service satisfy?" Moving away from features, advantages and benefits and back to the basics of so-what-can-you-do-for-me will bring value to anyone tasked with the duty of using innovation to drive revenue growth. CEO's... read on!
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