Pursuing The Innovator's Solution to The Innovator's Dilemma
Pursuing The Innovator’s Solution to The Innovator’s Dilemma
Donald MitchellChairman and chief executive officer of Mitchell and Company (www.mitchellandco.com), and co-author of The Ultimate Competitive Advantage, The Irresistible Growth Enterprise and The 2,000 Percent Solution.
Seeing What’s Next: Using Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry ChangeClayton M. Christensen, Erik A. Roth and Scott D. AnthonyPublished by Harvard Business School Press
Seldom do I remember a book that totally replaces the old and popular business literature quite as effectively as Seeing What’s Next does in superceding The Innovator’s Dilemma (Harvard Business School Press, 1997) and The Innovator’s Solution (Harvard Business School Press, 2003). If you have not read either of those books, you can skip them now and read Seeing What’s Next instead. If you have already read those books, you will be delighted to see how much more practical the advice is in Seeing What’s Next than in the earlier two efforts.
If you don’t know The Innovator’s Solution, that is the book in which Harvard Professor Clayton M. Christensen discussed the problem that existing companies have in identifying and responding appropriately to disruptive technology innovations rather than continuing innovations. In The Innovator’s Solution, Professor Christensen proposed a series of theories about what an appropriate response might look like. Now, in Seeing What’s Next, he and his co-authors, Scott D. Anthony and Erik A. Roth,describe how to apply the theories of The Innovator’s Solution while proposing a few new theories.
Before going into the details of what the book covers, I want to especially compliment Professor Christensen for overcoming in Seeing What’s Nexttwo of the three most serious weaknesses of The Innovator’s Solution– the omission of discussions on business model innovation and of leading technology business model innovation examples.
In Seeing What’s Next, the authors take on the challenge of helping executives and managers consider the likelihood of disruptive technology changes occurring and how they should evaluate their potential responses in light of current information. The analysis looks at both the perspective of the companies that will be disrupted and displaced as well as those who are leading the disruptions.
The book is a remarkable combination of theory, process suggestions and detailed case histories to explain the suggested process. As a result, this book will be the most practical guide available for technology executives until Professor Christensen brings out the next installment of his thinking in a future book.
The introduction contains the brilliant diagram of the Disruptive Innovation Theory from The Innovator’s Solution that was the crowning accomplishment of that fine book and goes on to develop a telecommunications case history to explain the book’s concepts.
In part I, the authors use existing theories about disruptive innovations to suggest which signals to pay attention to as suggesting that opportunities exist, how to determine if competitors will be a factor in disruption, choosing an appropriate response and considering how government and other non-market influences can affect the result.
In part II, the authors apply part I theories to higher education, commercial aviation, semiconductor customer benefits, health care productivity,non-US-based innovations and strategies, and the telecommunications industry. Those who are interested in those industries will find these sections to be of particular value and interest. I thought that the look at the changing customer benefit needs in the semiconductor industry was the best done and provides the clearest link to the earlier books. At the same time, I thought that the health care chapter was superficial and not well engaged to the issues.
As usual, Professor Christensen and his colleagues have provided footnotes that are as interesting as or more interesting than the text.
The book does have some weaknesses:
The proposed analysis of signals and competitors is extremely elementary. It reminded me of the state-of-the-art in strategic thinking in 1971 when I first started as a strategy consultant at The Boston Consulting Group. Today, better sources of information and means of analysis are available. I was surprised to see such primitive suggestions to such important questions.
In the competitive analysis, the book assumes rational competitors who understand where they are. In my experience, innovative situations have everyone confused and people mill about aimlessly... often acting against their own“rational” best interest due to confusion and emotional reactions.
The authors take the rationalist view that the future can be predicted well enough to enable planning and actions based on a specific scenario. Most experienced business people would not agree with that assessment. The opposing view is that you should develop scenarios of what might happen along a number of different extreme lines, and then look for directions that leave you better off regardless of which scenario occurs.
While the authors do a wonderful job of describing many disruptive innovations, they do a relatively poor job of discussing how to develop, nurture and accelerate the impact of such innovations. Hopefully, the next book will be much more of a “how to” effort in this direction.
Professor Christensen continues to rely on an oversimplified concept of customer needs involving “what customers are trying to do.” It’s almost embarrassing to see such a description that might have been used in the days before marketing was established as a management discipline.
Finally, while business model innovations are described in abundance, there’s little connection in the book to a process for pursuing business model innovation along with technical innovation. As a result, the table is set... but no meal is served in this area.
How good is this book? Certainly it vastly surpasses the alternatives,which were Professor Christensen’s earlier books. How good is it objectively? Many people tell me that Good to Great is the most helpful business book they have ever read. I found Seeing What’s Next to be a vastly better and more useful book. Try it. And be on the look out for the next volume in this series, whenever it appears.
