Clay Christensen’s “theory of innovation” sounds very simple but it is hard to apply in practice. We will start today with getting a feel for the basic elements of the theory of innovation. Check out the attached slides: ChristensenIntro. What do you think? Is this stuff super obvious and perhaps useless?
Posted in 
Tags: Temple Fox MIS
- Log In
- Blog Authors
Munir Mandviwalla
Brian R Bissell
Brian Michael Connelly
Eric Enders
Steven R Hernandez
Ryan P Maguire
Hasan A Numan
Victor J Bennicelli
Hiren Sheth
Yasmin Beganovic
Benjamin Mayer
Taylor Hayes
James Napier
Brandon Cammarano
Victoria L Cianciulli
Jillian J Davis
Michael Giurlando
Stacy D Gloster
Skyla Pope
Thomas Preston
Philip Raskovich
Nick Valeriano
Maurice T Winkfield
Kwok K Wong
Ermelinda Xhemali
Well, I think it is super obvious. On the obvious side, having a mentality to think outside of the box drives innovation forward. The so called disruptive thinking allows innovators to see the current position, evaluate how it can be improved or changed, and then implement a plan. This does not necessary make it the right path or what will become the accepted approach, but it moves innovation forward. With innovation comes growth or failure. It easy for a start-up company to be more creative and push innovation, but they lack the essential capital to bring the product to the public mass, quickly. Larger firms have this capability, but with so many stakeholders involved, their ability to innovate is battled with cost and relevance to the company’s strategy. On the flip side they have the larger budgets to test innovation and take it to new elevations without major serious consequences if it fails (bankruptcy).
Overall, what drives innovation is customer need. By investing money to make something better requires a common satisfaction among those that it will impact. The company’s investment and purpose needs to maintain stability, open the new markets, and allow more accessibility which is an obvious position in innovation and business growth.
I do no think it is super obvious. On the contrary, I think that this Introduction provided useful rules and information on how to detect/predict innovations in the future as well as analyze current market situations (in relation to innovative products sustaining or disrupting markets). The way that the Introduction explained the rules and gave industry examples (telecommunications) helped to explain the objectives of this book and the usefulness it will provide us as ‘Innovation’ students.