Great Innovater

Clayton Christensen is a giant in the world of innovation thinkers. And that's not just because the Harvard Business School professor stands 6 feet, 8 inches tall. Christensen's first book, The Innovator's Dilemma, became a bible for technology executives and Internet entrepreneurs not long after it was published 10 years ago. To date, it's sold 500,000 copies worldwide, while in 1999, Christensen was described by Forbes as "Andy Grove's Big Thinker" and featured on the magazine's cover with the former Intel chairman and Silicon Valley sage.

The book's theme—that good management is no guard against the disruptive power of new entrants who go after new customer groups or low-end markets—remains important today. "More than ever it has become shorthand for a classic problem," says Patrick Whitney, director of the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology. "People never have to explain it, they just mention Clayton's name or The Innovator's Dilemma and everyone gets what the problem is."

Ten years later, however, the innovation landscape is rather different. Globalization has exponentially expanded where threats lie. Design thinking and its focus on the customer has captured the minds of managers. And as chief executives increasingly look to reinvent their business models, innovation is no longer defined in terms of mere technological breakthroughs. So how relevant is a book that chronicles the upending of the disk drive, steel, and earth excavator industries?
Ideas Still Resonate

Very, says Robert Sutton, professor of management science and engineering at the Stanford Engineering School and co-founder of Stanford's d.school. "There are very few books, whether you do innovation in the academic world or in the business world, that you have to understand equally well," he says. "You have to know it." In essence, the dilemma Christensen describes—how to serve your core business while finding new markets and watching out for new entrants in your blind spot—is as critical today as it was 10 years ago.

While reading it today can plunge you into a bit of a time warp—"Internet appliances," those devices for the kitchen counter that would only browse the Web and respond to e-mail, did not upend the PC industry—Christensen's ideas still resonate. Criticisms of the book tend to surround its lack of solutions, which Christensen tried to correct in his follow-up, The Innovator's Solution, which was published in 2003 to less fanfare.

One reason the first book was so well-received, says Roger Martin, the dean of the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, is that Christensen doesn't criticize managers, as many ivory tower professors do in their books. Rather, a major theme is that great managers miss disruptive innovations precisely because they're focused on their customers, working hard to create returns for shareholders, and trying to do everything right.

"He takes a 'there but for the grace of god go you,' positive, blame-free approach [that managers both respond to and appreciate]," Martin says.

BusinessWeek Associate Editor Jena McGregor caught up with Christensen on June 11, exactly 10 years after the release of his book. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation:

Back in 1997, did you ever think the book would achieve the sort of popularity that it did?
I thought I had a good idea. It emerged from my doctoral thesis on the disk drive industry, and at the beginning I thought it applied a bit in computers and disk drives, but I didn't know how far it would reach. Then one by one people read the research and said this is "exactly what is happening in my industry." I really didn't understand that it was as generalized a phenomenon as it has turned out to be.

Your book focuses heavily on disruptions that are caused by advances in technology. More than ever, however, managers are defining "innovation" in a broader context, from breakthrough business processes to business models to customer experiences.
I think when I wrote The Innovator's Dilemma, my brain really was a technological brain and I was looking for a technological explanation. So I called it "disruptive technology." Then as I helped people to try and use the ideas, it became very clear there really isn't anything [it doesn't apply to].
Read more at:http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jun2007/id20070615_198176.htm?chan=innovation_innovation+%2B+design_top+stories