'The Innovator's Dilemma' -- innovation in the hard-disk industry.

http://www.businessweek.com/chapter/christensen.htm

by timr • 18 years ago

22 5 18 years ago

A very interesting article.

My first thought was how it relates to Microsoft as mentioned in this article: http://seekingalpha.com/article/80363-why-microsoft-will-nev... . Their fear of web apps undermining Windows/Office prevented them from taking a lead in the emerging market.

notauser• 18 years ago

Summary: You should stop listening to your customers if there is a new, bigger market of new customers out there who want something different from the customers you already have. This is especially true if your current customers are going to go away and/or change their mind about what they actually want in the near future.

Some examples:

- Change from 5.25" to 3.5", not wanted by desktop customers, but the new portable market wanted it. Companies that only listened to the desktop market failed, so new entrants (with no existing customers) mostly won.

- Change from 3.5" to 2.5", largely conducted by incumbent firms as customers who wanted 3.5" disks also wanted 2.5" disks.

As always this is harder to do than say :)

Alex3917• 18 years ago

"Summary: You should stop listening to your customers if there is a new, bigger market of new customers out there who want something different from the customers you already have."

I didn't read this article, but the HBS version had the point that the time to switch over to the new process is when the trajectory of the new process along the original variable puts it above the level that the satisficers want, not above the old process. So in other words you should adopt the new hard drive process when the trajectory puts the storage capacity ahead of what the satisficers want, not ahead of where the storage capacity of the old HD process will be. That is the point where the customers will switch over to the new process for the other benefits it provides.

This graph and the paragraph underneath explains it better: http://web.mit.edu/6.933/www/Fall2000/teradyne/clay.html

tptacek• 18 years ago

Most famous startup book ever. Read before any other book. Will absolutely light a fire under your ass.

Lots of lessons here, but to my mind the best is: your first version should suck. Not will, "should". On some measurable obvious axis, disruptive technologies are inferior to their predecessors, which is why the industry giants haven't done them already. Christianson's book is full of examples of things that looked crappy to the incumbents and their customers, but worked for some subset of the market, and then wound up eating the whole industry.

aswanson• 18 years ago

This podcast is long, but well worth the listen:

http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail135.html

'The Innovator's Dilemma' -- innovation in the hard-disk industry.

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