sharkGeist

The Innovators Solution
	Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth 2003 Clayton M. Christensen & Michael E. Raynor

Why is consistent, persistent growth so difficult to achieve? Surprisingly, it's not for lack of great ideas or capable managers, nor is it because customers are too fickle or innovation too unpredictable. Innovation fails, say Clayton M. Christensen and Michael E. Raynor, because organizations unwittingly strip the disruptive potential from new ideas before they ever see the light of day.

The Innovator's Dilemma analyzes the strategies that allow corporations to successfully grow new businesses and outpace the other players in the marketplace. Christensen's earlier book examined how focusing on profits can destroy even well-run corporations, while this book focuses on companies expanding by being "disruptors" who are able to outpace their entrenched competition. The authors (Christensen is a professor at Harvard Business School and Raynor, a director at Deloitte Research) examine the nine business decisions integral to growth, including product development, organizational structure, financing and key customer base. They cite such companies as IBM, AT&T, Sony, Microsoft and others to illustrate their points.

Generally, the writing is clear and specific. For example, in discussing whether a company has the resources necessary for growth, the authors say, "In order to be confident that managers have developed the skills required to succeed at a new assignment, one should examine the sorts of problems they have wrestled with in the past. It is not as important that managers have succeeded with the problem as it is for them to have wrestled with it and developed the skills and intuition for how to meet the challenge successfully the next time around"; they then provide a real-life example of a software company. Similar important strategies give readers insights that they can use in their own workplaces.