Quotes About Innovation

Disruptive technologies bring to a market a very different value proposition than had been available previously. Generally, disruptive technologies underperform established products in mainstream markets. But they have other features that a few fringe (and generally new) customers value. Products based on disruptive technologies are typically cheaper, simpler, smaller, and, frequently, more convenient to use. There

There are whole industries, such as venture capital, that are currently organized around the belief that innovation is essentially a game of playing the odds. But it's time to topple that tired paradigm. I've spent twenty years gathering evidence so that you can put your time, energy, and resources into creating products and services that you can predict, in advance, customers will be eager to hire. Leave relying on luck to the other guys.

On the one hand, if you have a strategy that really is working, you need to deliberately focus to keep everyone working together in the right direction. At the same time, however, that focus can easily cause you to dismiss as a distraction what could actually turn out to be the next big thing.

We adhere to the saying, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," while not really questioning whether "it" is "broke.

Strategy almost always emerges from a combination of deliberate and unanticipated opportunities. What's important is to get out there and try stuff until you learn where your talents, interests, and priorities begin to pay off.

People often think that the best way to predict the future is by collecting as much data as possible before making a decision. But this…is like driving a car looking only at the rearview mirror-because data is only available about the past.

the breakthrough researcher first discovers the fundamental causal mechanism behind the phenomena of success. This allows those who are looking for "an answer" to get beyond the wings-and-feathers mind-set of copying the attributes of successful companies.

Given that 93 percent of companies that ended up being successful had to change their initial strategy, any capital that demands that the early company become very big, very fast, will almost always drive the business off a cliff instead. A big company will burn through money much faster, and a big organization is much harder to change than a small one.

Innovation is less about producing something new and more about enabling something new and important for customers.

Figure I.1 The Impact of Sustaining and Disruptive Technological Change

There had, therefore, to be a reason why good managers consistently made wrong decisions when faced with disruptive technological change.

understand and harness the principles of disruptive innovation.

the innovator's dilemma: Should we invest to protect the least profitable end of our business, so that we can retain our least loyal, most price-sensitive customers? Or should we invest to strengthen our position in the most profitable tiers of our business, with customers who reward us with premium prices for better products?

railroads fell into the trap of letting the product define the market they were in, rather than the job customers were hiring them to do. They

In the early stage, managers are puzzle solvers, not number crunchers. Passive

Adopting new technologies can improve the way we solve Jobs to Be Done. But what's important is that you focus on understanding the underlying job, not falling in love with your solution for it.

Clayton M. Christensen

Through a jobs lens, what matters more than who reports to whom is how different parts of the organization interact to systematically deliver the offering that perfectly performs customers' Jobs to Be Done. When managers are focused on the customer's Job to Be Done, they not only have a very clear compass heading for their innovation efforts but they also have a vital organizing principle for their internal structure.

Markets that do not exist cannot be analyzed: Suppliers and customers must discover them together.

Processes and values define how resources—many of which can be bought and sold, hired and fired—are combined to create value.

Clayton M. Christensen

When disruptive change appears on the horizon, managers need to assemble the capabilities to confront the change before it has affected the mainstream business. In other words, they need an organization that is geared toward the new challenge before the old one, whose processes are tuned to the existing business model, has reached a crisis that demands fundamental change.

The circumstance is fundamental to defining the job (and finding a solution for it), because the nature of the progress desired will always be strongly influenced by the circumstance.

Walkman cassette player was temporarily put on hold when market research indicated that consumers would never buy a tape player that didn't have the capacity to record and that customers would be irritated by the use of earphones. But Morita ignored his marketing department's warning, trusting his own gut instead. The Walkman went on to sell over 330 million units and created a worldwide culture of personal music devices.