Professor Christensen was intrigued by the question, “What is it that kills successful companies?” If you look at business history, he mused, almost every company that at one point was widely regarded as unassailably successful is, just a few short decades later, either in the middle of the pack or at the bottom of the heap. Why is this? After studying the phenomenon, Christensen reached the odd conclusion that it is actually the paradigms of good management that were taught at the Harvard Business School that sowed the seeds of every company’s ultimate demise. In other words, “If you’re wildly successful, you’re doomed.”
Interestingly, on the other side of every one of those corporate fatalities was a tremendous entrepreneurial success story. Christensen’s second wave of research focused on how entrepreneurs starting new ventures and innovators within existing companies can reignite growth. Is there a way to grow a business with a high probability of success that would allow innovators to squash an established, well-run competitor?
In this ITSMA Viewpoint, originally published in March, 2007, Christensen, Harvard Business School professor, co-founder of Innosight LLC, and author of The Innovator’s Dilemma (1997), The Innovator’s Solution (2003), and Seeing What’s Next (2004), discusses disruptive innovation—how to do it, how to survive it, and how marketing can help.
Key takeaways include:
- Compete against non-consumption. Find a population of people who don’t currently have access to a product because it’s complex and expensive. Figure out a way to make it simple and affordable, and you have a disruptive opportunity.
- Attack the market leader at the low-end. Create an economic model that will allow you to go after a piece of business that is unattractive to the leader. Rather than go after you, the leader will flee up-market.
- Build purpose brands. If there is a “job” to do, position your product or service to do that job.