Reading List · Business
The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail
Why successful companies fail by doing everything 'right' - and what to do about it
"The reason is that good management itself was the root cause. Managers played the game the way it was supposed to be played."
- Clayton M. Christensen
Why It Matters
Christensen's work is the business equivalent of understanding mass extinctions. Species (companies) perfectly adapted to their environment become vulnerable when conditions change. The innovator's dilemma is evolutionary lock-in by another name.
Key Ideas
- Disruptive innovation attacks from below the mainstream market
- Incumbents rationally ignore disruption because their best customers don't want it
- The same capabilities that create success cause failure when the environment shifts
- Disruption is a process, not an event
How It Connects to This Framework
Book 6 (Adaptation & Evolution) chapter on extinction events directly parallels Christensen's disruption theory. The heuristics page on the Innovator's Dilemma connects his framework to biological concepts of niche specialization and punctuated equilibrium.