The Innovator's Action

Why do some large companies follow their long-standing success models only to end up in trouble, while some startups rise rapidly through disruptive innovation? This book is Australian strategy scholar Joshua Gans's reexamination and extension of Clayton Christensen's theory of disruptive innovation more than two decades after it was introduced. The author investigates dozens of companies that once succeeded or have since declined, including Apple, Canon, Netflix, Microsoft, Fujifilm, Kodak, Polaroid, Blockbuster, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Intel, and RIM, pursuing a key question: when facing the same technological change, why did Fujifilm and Canon successfully transform while Blockbuster and Encyclopaedia Britannica fell by the wayside? Contrary to conventional views, Gans distinguishes two paths of disruption: the first is "organizational structural innovation" originating from the supply side, which occurs when a company devotes all its energy to improving the architecture of existing products while neglecting entirely new architectures; the second is "self-disruption" originating from the demand side, which uses an independent organization to open up new low-end or new markets. He argues that it is difficult for a company to pursue both types of disruption simultaneously, and this is precisely where "the disruption dilemma" lies. In the book, Gans also summarizes several practical approaches for companies responding to disruption: additional investment, waiting and shifting investment, acquiring competitors, integrating resources and adjusting organizational structure, seizing core technological competencies, exiting the industry gracefully, and balancing forward-looking investment with current profitability. Aimed at business managers and management researchers, the book provides an actionable analytical framework.