The Big Idea Myth. Do you have a big idea? Is it really, really, really big? Huge even? We are idea machines. We come up with new ones constantly, usually at odd times and in strange places. There’s probably nothing more romantic than someone in love with an idea. We tend to glorify flashes of genius because it’s exciting and makes a good story. However, many people with great ideas have been lost to history, while some have become famous for ideas that others had too. Gregor Mendel’s Big Idea Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk, had a big idea.
It wasn’t until decades after his death that his idea came to the fore and he became considered the “father of genetics.” Thomas Kuhn, in his classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, pointed out that, although history usually records that one person in connection with a particular breakthrough, a closer look usually reveals that several people could rightly claim credit for important discoveries. Google’s Small Ideas Why Apple Isn’t a Disruptive Innovator - Greg. What is Disruptive Innovation? Can your company be Disruptive? A lot seem to want to be. In the hypercompetitive digital world everybody is looking for an edge and being “Disruptive” sounds like a good way to be clever and beat the competition. The term is used (or overused) usually to show that one is “thinking outside the box.” Yet Disruptive Innovation isn’t about being wily or cunning, it is about passion and privation.
Companies who seek it should be careful what they wish for. When Clayton Christensen coined the term “Disruptive Innovation” in his classic book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, he had something very specific and counter-intuitive in mind. He named it aptly, because Disruptive Innovation isn’t about being clever at all, but presents firms with some very difficult choices. Why Do Successful Companies Fail ? What Christensen set out to learn was, “How can great firms fail?” They listened to their customers: The companies he studied didn’t have their heads in the sand. A Surprising Answer - Greg. The Case Against Radical Change. The barbarians are at the gate! We are on an burning platform in the ocean! This is no time for incrementalism, we need radical change! We hear this stuff a lot. It’s become the Henny Youngman one-liner for the digital age. Value Networks As I noted in an earlier post, a business does not stand alone, but is part of an ecosystem. The concept of value networks is not a new one.
While value chains focused on individual firms, value networks recognize that processes for value creation are often far flung. What should be obvious is that for radical innovation to work on a large scale, the entire value network has to be aligned. The Curious Case of Disruptive Innovation Clayton Christensen pointed out in his book The Innovator’s Dilemma that firms go to great lengths to keep their value networks happy. At some point, their products get so good that they are really better than what anybody needs.
That’s the essence of disruptive innovation. The Flywheel and The Doom Loop - Greg. Disruptive versus Radical Innovations. Clayton Christenson’s seminal The Innovator’s Dilemma is now 10 years old, and its central idea of “disruptive innovation” is now part of the everyday language of innovation. Recently, I finally read the book after having loosely tossed the term around for a few years. I was shocked to discover that I had misunderstood the concept and made glib assumptions based on sloppy journalistic references. Properly penitent, I began using the term correctly and discovered, to my further shock, that nearly everybody else around me was also using the term incorrectly. By misunderstanding this one critical term, we lose much of the understanding of the innovator’s dilemma discovered by Christenson.
Here is a cheat-sheet to help you understand and remember the implications of ‘disruptive.’ Should help elevate your next profound discussion on the nature of innovation. Examples The Disruption Pattern Why this happens is as straightforward as it is inevitable. Distinction from Radical/Incremental. Top 10 Clayton Christensen Insights – World Innovation Forum. Taking a slightly different approach than other World Innovation Forum bloggers, I’ve distilled the first 90 minutes with Clayton Christensen down into these Top 10 Insights: Finally, I’d just like to say that if you’ve never seen Clayton Christensen in person, he is a gentle giant with a calm demeanor, and surprisingly funny. When Being Rational Kills Your Business – Clayton Christensen. May 11, 2009 by Hutch Carpenter Last week, I attended the World Innovation Forum on behalf of my company, Spigit. One of the speakers was Clayton Christensen, Harvard professor most famous for his book The Innovator’s Dilemma.
His talk was one I really looked forward to, and he didn’t disappoint. The theme of his talk was Disruptive Innovation as a Platform for Growth. A good all-purpose title, but one that really didn’t do justice to the range of topics. Clayton delivered a lot of good knowledge and analysis. I tweeted most of his talk, and I wanted to pull it together in a blog post here. Big Steel vs. He opened with a discussion that one can find in The Innovator’s Dilemma. Key to the story is this: The steel market could be segmented into different segments, from low-grade to high-grade steel. Cue the disruptive technology, mini mills in this case. Ultimately ceding the low-end seemed OK to the big mills. In the short term, this strategy was quite beneficial to the integrated mills. Six Keys to Building New Markets by Unleashing Disruptive Innovation.
Managers today have a problem. They know their companies must grow. But growth is hard, especially given today's economic environment where investment capital is difficult to come by and firms are reluctant to take risks. Managers know innovation is the ticket to successful growth. But they just can't seem to get innovation right. When companies keep improving their existing products and services to meet their best customers' needs, they eventually run into the "innovator's dilemma. " By doing everything right, they create opportunities for new companies to take their markets away.
Established companies historically have struggled when trying to create new markets. Recent research indicates these problems are systemic. Managers typically grow impatient when we tell them this. The problem is, managers all too frequently use a one-size-fits-all theory. 1. All Innovative ideas start out as half-baked propositions.— Clayton M. Incumbents almost always win battles of sustaining innovations. When "Creative Destruction" Destroys More than It Creates - Chris Zook. When changes in the natural environment accelerate, so do the extinction rates of the Earth’s creatures. It happened to the dinosaurs and again to many species during the Ice Age. Many scientists believe we may be entering another such period .
The same happens in business, and we are clearly entering a period where the extinction of the slow, the inflexible, and the bureaucratic is about to happen in record numbers. My colleagues and I at Bain & Company have been tracking this for forty years, and we have never seen companies losing their leadership positions as quickly as they are today. A list of the top 20 banks today contains only seven that were on the list a decade ago.
A similar pattern hold for airlines. And for telecom. Some of this, business historians might say, is simply due to what Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction” — a desirable culling of businesses that can’t keep pace. So how did the top 100 create such astonishing returns? Compete for the long term.