The Innovators Dilemma

The Innovators Dilemma by Christensen , Clayton M

The Innovators Dilemma by Christensen , Clayton M

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Institutional Affiliation Goes Here Abstract

Christensen , Clayton M 's book The Innovators Dilemma is the most widely read business book of recent years . The book is footed on the research of a vital question Why do leading companies fail when faced with disruptive technologies

INTRODUCTION

On analyzing leaders in the industries , Christensen has found out that able management technique like heeding to customers , investing in new technologies , analyzing market trends and

earmarking resources to the most promising innovations are stratagems that are only situationally successful . Christensen has also studied the business cycles of different industries and demonstrated that the capability of a company to successfully innovate counts on the company 's awareness of the kind of innovation it is creating . He has also found out that some management practices are disastrous if applied to the marketing of more disruptive technologies . Further , Christensen has clearly distinguished between a sustaining and disruptive technologies . For instance , a sustaining technology is the method and material employed to permit disk-drive makers to augment the speed and memory of computer of 5 .25 hard disk drives (Lewis , 2001 , 61

ANALYSIS

A disruptive technology is one which is smaller , cheaper and more convenient to use . Further , it takes a long time to find a use for some disruptive technology but once such usage is found out , then it would completely enhance the product performance demanded by a given group of customers . Some examples of disruptive innovations are LaserJet printers , 1 .8 inch disk drives , digital photography technology and mini steel mills (Garreau ,2001 ,61

Company managers should exercise soul-searching before leaping on any form of disruptive technology effort . The admonish proposed are as follow

Prepare for failure

Do not allocate all your funds on being right the first time

Construe you preliminary efforts as learning process

Revise your strategies continuously as you gather data

Further , Christensen has listed out five principles of disruptive innovation and these principles may be regarded as counter-intuitive to conventional management practice and they are listed and discussed below

Investors and Customers

According to Christensen , major customers can restrain a company 's capability to organize a functional disruptive technology . If customers and investors do not visualize any added value , then introduction of such technology in the market is mostly affected (Lewis ,2001 ,61

Large companies and Small markets

Disruptive technologies initially thrive in small and emerging markets and then later expand to new and large markets . Large companies are reluctant to invest in small markets due to low rate of return on their investment and they always concentrate on large markets . Christensen did find from research that very few large companies had interested in marketing disruptive technologies . However , they pass it on to spin-off organizations with adequate resources , highly skilled employees and whose size corroborated with that of the target market

Market Analysis

Christensen is of the view that assessing the effects of disruptive technologies...