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This article is full of fallacies. First, it would help if the author had actually read "The Innovators Dilemma" If he had, he would have understood that Christ
by jamiequint 17y ago
This article is full of fallacies. First, it would help if the author had actually read "The Innovators Dilemma" If he had, he would have understood that Christensen never says that innovation is limited to small players, but only that disruptive innovation is best tackled by small players, whereas continuous innovation is a strength of large companies. (Disruptive innovation is characterized by Christensen as an initially small market with a different customer base than is satisfied by the mainstream players.)
All the infrastructure changes mentioned by the author of this article should be categorized as continuous innovation, improvements to existing systems, upgrades that serve the same customer base. (e.g. Improving existing energy and healthcare infrastructure)
Then of course is the ridiculous quote
"To be competitive in Internet search and some other Web services, which cater to hundreds of millions of users worldwide, a company must build data centers of gargantuan size, and only a handful of companies can design and afford them"
However, the winning search company did not start out of Microsoft or any other gargantuan company, it started as a startup then grew into Google.
- rfreytag 17y agoI came here to also disagree with the article. You -just- beat me to it and for similar reasons. One key mistake the author of this article made is how vast is an economy of potential collaborators versus the limited number of people extant within one company. And being in the same company is no guarantee that you will be motivated or -allowed- to be motivated to work to a shared goal. That last point is particularly addressed in "The Innovator's Dilemma." Large businesses got large by being very good at focusing on an established goal. A new goal is particularly unwelcome. I wonder what Clayton Christensen would make of Apple (Apple II->Mac, MacOS <6 -> System X OS, iPod [where did that come from to become a huge share of revenues?], iPhone). Steve Jobs seems to have been innovating despite what Clayton writes. I still think Clayton is right but how does Steve Jobs do it over and over?
- mediaman 17y agoI don't think Christensen claims that big companies can't generate disruptive innovation, only that there are immense organizational forces that gear it toward incremental improvements rather than disruptive improvements. The exceptions seem to occur with exceptionally headstrong CEOs who can see beyond who the existing customer is, and create products for markets that don't yet exist (or are at least immature). Jobs is an example of that. The problem is that headstrong CEOs with a fantastic ear for future markets are not a systemic business solution, or else there would be many more examples. And there's a more specific problem here. That Apple currently has a CEO like it does is due to a historical artifact. Had Jobs not been a co-founder of Apple, would he have been brought in as CEO? If not, would Apple's board have brought someone in similar to him? It's unlikely -- usually the top candidate is the "safe" hire who has demonstrated immense leadership in incremental business domination, not the rough radical. Eventually, Jobs will retire or pass away, and that historical artifact will no longer be relevant -- and the immense organizational forces Christensen describes will begin their work on Apple.
- gruseom 17y agoI don't think Christensen claims that big companies can't generate disruptive innovation In fact, he expresses the hope that his book will make it possible for them to do so. I distinctly remember going "What?!" when I read that. Who, besides a few big companies who would then monopolize the world, would want that? Luckily it's a fantasy.