Clayton M. Christensen (1952–2020)

Where The Innovator's Dilemma was about theory, this is about implementation-a recipe for managers looking to lead successful companies. Christensen admirably tackles the complex problem of guiding a company though times of disruption. There's a lot here, but the essence is that if you want to succeed, start with an idea that is somewhat profitable and go after customers who are under-served, either because no product exists that fits their needs, or they're the least profitable segment of show more an established market. If you want to make a lot of money, you need to have a product that is "not-yet-good-enough" so that your firm can compete on quality and innovation as opposed to cost.

Christensen advises against purely causal management-picking executive who have succeeded before or following the latest reorganization fad. He is particularly opposed to 'focusing on our core competencies' as the kind of accounting trick that hollows out a company over the long term. The kind of foresight required to move towards where the market is going rather than where's it been isn't easy to acquire, the insight and flexibility needed to switch strategies in midstream is even harder to find, but Christensen makes a compelling argument that good management is possible. show less

''For many of us, as the years go by, we allow our dreams to be peeled away. We pick our jobs for the wrong reasons and then we settle for them. We begin to accept that it’s not realistic to do something we truly love for a living. Too many of us who start down the path of compromise will never make it back. Considering the fact that you’ll likely spend more of your waking hours at your job than in any other part of your life, it’s a compromise that will always eat away at you. But you show more need not resign yourself to this fate.''

I will read this book again. And again.

I feel like I've been pretty good at choosing a life-work balance that aligns with my priorities. I chose a career that provides high satisfaction and daily challenge but also allows me to put the needs of my family first. Still, as I plowed through Clayton Christensen's "How Will You Measure Your Life?" I found myself learning and considering and rethinking and evaluating and, eventually, realizing how fortunate (or maybe blessed?) I am to have fallen into my current career. Wittingly or not.

Still, there is more. As I read, I realized how young I am and how much more opportunity there is for growth, need to continue to recalibrate, to balance, to evaluate. It is so easy to lose sight of balance along the way as you climb the ladder of success, often to only find out that the ladder is against the wrong wall. So, I'll read it again.

Here's another great quote from the book on this point:

''The only way a strategy can get implemented is if we dedicate resources to it. Good intentions are not enough—you’re not implementing the strategy that you intend if you don’t spend your time, your money, and your talent in a way that is consistent with your intentions. In your life, there are going to be constant demands for your time and attention. How are you going to decide which of those demands gets resources? The trap many people fall into is to allocate their time to whoever screams loudest, and their talent to whatever offers them the fastest reward. That’s a dangerous way to build a strategy.''

Energy, my friends. You've got to devote energy to the strategy, to the goal, the thing...whatever it is. A great example of this is my better-half, Britt. I knew she liked to quilt when we married, but I didn't realize she was an artist, too. Maybe that's a distinction without a difference to you, but before I married I thought quilting was all squares and strings of yarn that the local Relief Society tied for newlyweds and disaster victims. I didn't realize that it had its nuances and distinctions, disputes and styles, just as any other art, whether its oil on canvas, photography, clay, or performance (and just as expensive, too. Don't ask me what we're going to do with all the fabric accumulating in her sewing room, because I don't know--and in the interest of marital bliss, I'm not going to ask. At least not seriously). And as an artist, it can consume and occupy large parts of Britt's brain for huge chunks of time. You see, she decided long ago that she wanted to be a master quilter, an artist, to create and to make, and she puts a lot of energy into accomplishing that goal. The result? She's been commissioned to create custom works of art, as well as has placed in national art competitions. She is making amazing progress in distinguishing herself as a creator and a master artist. She puts energy into her strategy, and she's constantly thinking about how to improve. It is inspiring.

This kind of leads to another great quote that I love:

''How you allocate your resources is where the rubber meets the road. Real strategy—in companies and in our lives—is created through hundreds of everyday decisions about where we spend our resources. As you’re living your life from day to day, how do you make sure you’re heading in the right direction? Watch where your resources flow. If they’re not supporting the strategy you’ve decided upon, then you’re not implementing that strategy at all.''

A great way to see how you're implementing your strategy, and how much energy you're putting into it, is an evaluation of where your resources are going. This isn't just where you spend your money, though that's a huge part of it, but how you spend your time. I think one way I see that manifest is in the kinds of things I see my children reflect from me. I learned early on in our family's history that while each of the girls is their own individual, they are also incredibly absorbant of what they see and hear Britt and I do--they mirror us, sometimes in uncanny fashion. I recall a moment of personal reflection and self-assessment initiated when I heard my daughter talking to her sister across the house and, without citing me, say almost the exact same thing I had said a dozen times. (On a lighter note, I also observe that the girls are as into Star Wars as they are into their dolls...maybe more so. The Force is with us, and we are one with the Force.) As I've watched them grow, I've seen them adopt interests that they see us spend time doing, whether it is in the outdoors, certain athletics, television shows, books, and even our bad habits. I see myself putting energy into something, and it is reflected all around me, often in the things my family does and does not care about.

Clayton has something to say on this, too:

''High-achievers focus a great deal on becoming the person they want to be at work—and far too little on the person they want to be at home. Investing our time and energy in raising wonderful children or deepening our love with our spouse often doesn’t return clear evidence of success for many years. What this leads us to is over-investing in our careers, and under-investing in our families—starving one of the most important parts of our life of the resources it needs to flourish.''

This is perhaps the most important part of what I took away from the book, though there are lessons throughout--nothing I do at work will matter if I don't balance it with what I do at home. So, I try to balance it. I hope to balance it.

So, it's a great book. And I'll read it again. show less

As technological development has increasingly driven the world economy, many observe that it causes a disruptive economic effect. New technology can humble big players and lift new players to leading positions. These effects often happen despite managers doing all the “right things.”

We now have enough data to begin to analyze how technological disruptions happen across many industries. More importantly, we have data about how to manage innovation’s turbulence. In this classic text, show more Clayton Christensen helps us understand this phenomenon in depth and then teaches us how to milk it to our advantage and our survival.

I work in software development for biomedical research, so in my career, I have observed firsthand how creative disruptions can reorient fields and industries many times. I’ve even done it some myself. I certainly understand how managers could fear it, and reading books like Christensen’s can demystify it significantly. In fact, if someone truly wants to understand how to strategically plan for disruptive technologies, this book is essential reading. Why? It defined the approach back in the 1990s.

In typical erudite fashion, Christensen uses the stories of various industries to tell his story. He especially relies upon the disk-drive industry in early computing to define his terms. This industry had a quick pace of innovation while also having lots of market information available. Each change from large disk drives to smaller models, or from more expensive models to cheaper models, disrupted the trajectory of the entire industry. New winners and losers came out in the fallout. Such well-documented details allow for easy construction of theoretical models.

Then Christensen tests these theoretical lens on different industries that don’t have all the speedy development of modern computing. He describes disruptive technologies in the context of mechanical construction equipment, for instance. Though the turnover rate is slower here, the patterns still hold.

Finally, he suggests ways to enhance the successful development and deployment of disruptive technologies. He suggests that most larger companies continue to focus on refining existing technologies while they christen smaller companies with the task of finding emerging markets for their survival.

I innovate in academic environments that seek broad implementation. Administratively, we organize ourselves in small groups that takes risk to create big changes at times. So Christensen’s paradigm certainly makes sense me. It also correlates well with how actual technological change has taken place since I first started paying attention to it in the 1990s.

Because modern technology affects just about every industry today, leading managers need to pay attention to the concepts of creative disruptions and disruptive technology. Technologists like myself can also benefit from learning to speak their business colleagues’ language to enhance their work’s effect. There’s no better place to accomplish either of these tasks than from the work that first defined the concept. show less

I've been trying to get a handle on what innovation is for a while, and Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen is a solid introduction to the corporate perspective. Christensen's study is based on the difference between disruptive and sustaining innovations in business, focusing primarily on hard drives but looping into backhoes and motorcycles, along with other topics.

Christensen's big result is that leading firms tend to fail when faced with disruptive innovation, losing out show more to new entrants. This is paradoxically the fault of 'good management', listening to customers and investing effort in improving the product. A focus on existing markets leaves the firm unable to grasp opportunities, and vulnerable to disruption from below as entrants push from marginal markets into the mainstream.

Christensen's model of resources, processes, and organizational values is a useful way of looking at how a business makes money, and his data collection is comprehensive, if narrowly focused. From a management perspective, Christensen's work is pessimistic. The only way for an firm to catch a new technology is to set up an essentially independent unit, and if it succeeds, put it at the top of the old business. I'm not sure how realistic that is right now, given the poor performance of electronics conglomerates like Sony, and the rise of cloud and hardware based silos run by Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, etc.

And finally, while I get that innovation is hard to manage and capture and economic return off of, Christensen doesn't address the larger context of what innovation is, or under what circumstances it is desirable or undesirable.

Since this is the first of May, maybe that old anti-globalization chant is right: "Disease, starvation, will not solved by corporations. That's bullshit, get off it, the enemy is profit!" show less