The Innovator's Dilemma
When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail
by Clayton M. Christensen
Synopsis
Studying industries from disk drives to steel, Christensen shows how the very practices that make great companies great — listening to top customers, focusing on high-margin products — make them vulnerable to lower-end disruptive innovations that initially look like toys.
Editorial review
Christensen's book introduced the concept of 'disruptive innovation' to mainstream business thought. The word has since been overused to incoherence — go back to the original to recover what it actually means and why it remains so useful.
Key takeaways
- 1
Disruption typically comes from below the existing market, not from a head-on competitor.
- 2
Listening to your best customers can blind you to your future market.
- 3
Sustaining innovations and disruptive innovations require different organizational structures.
- 4
Resource allocation, not strategy documents, is the real strategy.
The right reader
Founders, executives, and product strategists. Especially valuable for incumbents wondering why a small competitor 'shouldn't matter.'
What it touches
How it reads
Analytical, original, foundational.
Reading difficulty: Moderate
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