The Innovator's Dilemma

Clayton Christensen explains why even outstanding companies that do everything right can lose market leadership when confronted with disruptive innovation—technologies that start worse than existing solutions but gradually improve and eventually surpass them. The book reveals "the innovator's dilemma": competent managers face a disincentive to pursue new markets because best practices like benchmarking competition, investing in new technologies, and listening to customers can become stumbling blocks. Christensen identifies successful strategies including creating separate divisions for disruptive technologies and finding new markets that value disruptive products' attributes rather than competing in mainstream markets.

7 sections · 26 lessons

Course outline

Disruption Fundamentals

  1. Good Management Fails
  2. Sustaining Innovations
  3. Disruptive Value
  4. Disruption Pattern
  5. Disruption Fundamentals

Market Dynamics

  1. Value Networks
  2. Performance Oversupply
  3. Customer Resource Control
  4. Market Dynamics

Five Principles

  1. Customers Drive Investment
  2. Small Wins Insignificant
  3. Markets Defy Analysis
  4. Capabilities Become Disabilities
  5. Good Enough Shifts
  6. Five Principles

Industry Case Studies

  1. Steel Minimills
  2. Hydraulic Excavators
  3. Honda Discovery
  4. Personal Computers
  5. Industry Case Studies

Strategic Responses

  1. Autonomous Organizations
  2. Right-Size Organizations
  3. Fail Fast Learn
  4. Find Different Markets
  5. Strategic Responses

Market Evolution

  1. Four Phases
  2. Upmarket Mobility
  3. Market Evolution

Management Practices

  1. Balance Innovation Portfolios
  2. Right Customers
  3. Adaptive Processes
  4. Strategy as Hypothesis
  5. Management Practices

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