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Nabaza.net-The MarketPlace - The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth
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List Price: $32.95
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Manufacturer: Harvard Business School Press
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.4063
EAN: 9781578518524
ISBN: 1578518520
Label: Harvard Business School Press
Manufacturer: Harvard Business School Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: 2003-09
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
Studio: Harvard Business School Press
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Editorial Reviews:
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In the worldwide bestseller, "The Innovator's Dilemma", Clayton M. Christensen exposed a crushing paradox behind the failure of many industry leaders. By doing what good companies were supposed to do-focus on pleasing their most profitable customers-leaders were paving the way for their own demise. How? By ignoring 'disruptive technologies' - new, cheaper innovations that initially target small customer segments but evolve to displace the reigning product. Now, Christensen and coauthor Michael E. Raynor cut the Gordian knot of the 'innovator's dilemma' with "The Innovator's Solution".This groundbreaking book reveals that innovation is not as unpredictable as most managers have come to believe. While the outcomes of past innovations seem random, the process by which innovations are packaged and shaped within companies is very predictable. By understanding and managing the forces that influence this process, companies can shape high-octane business plans that create truly disruptive growth.Drawing on years of in-depth research and using new theories tested in hundreds of companies across many industries, the authors identify the processes that create successful innovations, and show managers how to tailor their strategies to the changing circumstances of a dynamic world. Comprehensive yet practical, "The Innovator's Solution" is an actionable prescription for innovation-driven, profitable growth. 'A good business book makes managers stop and think. A great business book teaches managers how to stop and think. This is a great book. It is hard to imagine an executive team that would not benefit from devoting an entire day to discussing it' -Geoffrey Moore, Chairman and Founder, TCG Advisors, and author, "Crossing the Chasm" and "Living on the Fault Line".'In "The Innovator's Solution", Christensen and Raynor address the holy grail of all organizations: how to generate growth and sustain it over long periods. Avoiding the temptation to provide simplistic formulas, they guide the reader through carefully constructed frameworks that teach how to think about the issues that limit-and provide-growth to organizations' - Dr. Andrew S.Grove, Chairman of the Board, Intel. 'Christensen and Raynor have done a superb job of creating a framework for helping to understand the industry dynamics and for planning your own growth alternatives' - Pekka Ala-Pietila, President, Nokia Corporation.' Singapore, as a small nation, needs to be innovative and sensitive to disruptive changes more than other countries. Christensen and Raynor have provided an excellent framework to reduce the randomness of the innovation process. This framework will help in our effort to nurture an environment conducive for enterprises to create and capitalize on disruptive innovations' - Teo Ming Kian, Chairman, Singapore Economic Development Board. '"The Innovator's Solution" goes directly to the heart of why large companies have failed to sustain innovation. Christensen and Raynor have a deep insight into the challenges that innovative companies face, and they propose practical, realistic solutions to the dilemmas of innovation. This book will be extremely useful to all managers who are committed to using innovation to sustain their growth' - Bill George, former Chairman and CEO, Medtronic, Inc.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Iwant answers, not problems?
Comment: 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 rapidly 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: the real thing
Comment: 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 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Disruptive Innovations Key to Spicing Up Competition
Comment: 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 in much detail. For example, the integrated American automakers are evolving toward modular architectures for their mainstream models in order to compete on speed and flexibility. This has in turn led to a significant consolidation of their suppliers.
Christensen and Raynor also clearly demonstrate that none of the attribute-based categorizations of funding such as venture capital vs. corporate capital and public versus private capital are a reliable predictor of a new venture success. Christensen and Raynor correctly point out that the best money is patient for growth but impatient for profit in the first years of a new business. The deal spiral from inadequate growth as Christensen and Raynor call it, results from impatience for growth and patience for profit.
Finally, Christensen and Raynor highlight the three roles that senior executives have to play in leading new growth:
1) Short-Term: To be at the juncture between disruptive growth businesses and the mainstream businesses to decide on the allocation of the company's resources and processes
2) Longer-Term: To lead what Christensen and Raynor call a "disruptive growth engine" to repeatedly launch successful growth businesses
3) Perpetual: To anticipate when the circumstances are changing, and to pass on their know-how to others to identify these signals.
To summarize, Christensen and Raynor made with The Innovator's Solution an important contribution to the better understanding and harnessing of disruptive innovations that are an essential ingredient of what Joseph Schumpeter called "creative destruction."
Customer Rating:
Summary: Motivation assymetries
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Purpose of Your Product
Comment: 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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