Review of
Instaread Summary of
The Innovator’s Dilemma When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail by
Clayton M. Christensen
The
introduction of dramatically new technologies has been a constant theme of
human history, in many cases the new things led to the rapid expansion and
dominance of one society over another. This is summed up very well in the bit
of prose by Hilaire Belloc from the time when the
Europeans were engaging in their policy of colonial conquest. “Whatever happens, we have got, The Maxim gun, and they have not.”
Although the
consequences are no longer wars of conquest, sudden changes in technology can
lead to a death sentence for formerly vibrant and seemingly stable companies
and the pace of this change has accelerated.
The book was
first published in 1997, yet remains just as relevant today and will no doubt
still be so in another two decades. Clayton M. Christensen is a professor at
Harvard Business School and uses a series of case studies to illustrate his
points of change. The most important point is that customers can generally tell
you what they want to change/improve in what they have now but are generally as
clueless as you are about any dramatic changes that may be coming unseen over
the hill.
This is one of
the best summaries that I have read in the Instaread line, it is concise and
makes a series of solid points of awareness. While some product lines still
remain fairly stable, many are on the verge of being new producted out of
existence.
Although it is
clear from this summary that Christensen does not tell the reader much about
how to meet your existential threats the book does one of the preconditions
well. It gives you a very prominent sign that is dangerous to ignore, “Warning,
land mines ahead!”
This book was made available for free for review
purposes.
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