The Innovator’s

Dilemma

60-SECOND BOOK BRIEFS

Clayton Christensen wrote the book The Innovator’s Dilemma to help us understand how innovation works, and how companies of all sizes can learn how to do it better.

At the heart of the book is the distinction between sustaining and disruptive technologies (or innovation).

sustaining

disruptive (or innovation)TECHNOLOGIES

SUSTAINING INNOVATIONimproves established products. Think of this like faster processing speed on a computer,

or better fuel efficiency on existing cars.

DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION

creates new markets. Think of this like what the iPod did for the music market and what Tesla is doing right now

in the car industry. These technologies are generally “cheaper, simpler, smaller, and, frequently, more

convenient to use.”

MARKET

The problem most established companies

face is there is little to no market for disruptive

technologies at first, and so it’s hard to make a

business case for investing in them.

STARTUP

The solution for this, Christensen suggests, is to create a separate organization (like a startup) to experiment in as many ways as possible to find out what works.

STARTUP

THE LEAN

Much like what Eric Ries suggests in The Lean Startup. What’s old is new again.

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