The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth

This is turning common marketing and product development wisdom on its head. The basic idea is that you should not follow the masses, go with the flow or to look at previous successes to define your future products and services. Instead look at how people use products and services in their every day life and develop something that will do it better (cheaper, faster, more pleasant). I loved the airport example about the smart phone...for years we're sold that we need to bring all the office applications onto the berries and PDAs (think Word, Excel, PowerPoint)...your office away from office for all these road warriors. Well it turns out, people don't really care to do office work while on the road. When they have 5-10 minutes to kill at the airport people (when not talking on the phone) like to read the paper, play games, browse through magazines, check sports and stocks online and watch TV. So your competition is not the desktop applications but the newspapers, TV and the entertainment. Voila, need to figure out how to bring that onto the berries/PDA instead of how to cram rich SW apps on the screen. Another great example was the smoothie cafe. The owners tried all the usual marketing techniques (discounts, different flavors, names) to increase sales to no success. Then they analyzed for a whole week how people use their product. They find out in the morning most people bought a smoothie as a better on-the-go breakfast alternative (coffee was not fulfilling, bananas were messy, doughnuts were less healthy, sandwiches hard to maneuver while driving etc). In the afternoon moms with kids were most of the customers. They bought a smoothie to give a healthier, more fulfilling and cheaper snack to the kids. So the owners adjusted the product to these 2 main uses instead of one universal change across the board. The book teaches you a new way to look at competition and what you need to innovate against: Stop looking at your direct competitors to think about innovation (if we had that feature as they did, if we had more widgets, more colors, more sizes...) instead ask yourself if people are not buying this kind of product / service, then what are they doing today to fulfill the need? And so that is your real competition. Sometimes they do nothing in which case you have a virgin territory to explore. The book warns the change is not easy and in fact is susceptible to lot of push back. There are suggestions and practical examples on how to start implementing this new thinking in the organization. If anything the book it's a very refreshing look on the strategic planning required to building new products and services. Definitely a great discussion point.

On the advice of a friend, I purchased this book back at the end of 2003. I read and studied everything, including the many valuable footnotes and excerpts at the end of each chapter. I highlighted the points and case studies that impressed me and made notes in the back pages as ideas came to me while reading it. Following the principles I learned in the book, I started an eLearning company with a friend in the beginning of 2004. I had no experience in the eLearning area, but I knew what disruptive principles I wanted to implement. We built software that was for companies to quickly and easily create and track their own online training and at a disruptive cost. Our system didn't have all the bells and whistles of the competition, but we weren't targeting the top of the market, we wanted to enter at the bottom--where competitors weren't paying attention or cared, just like the other disruptive innovations cited in the book. Following the book, our product was affordable, simple, easy-to-use, and addressed the basic needs of customers. We eliminated all the sales barriers, contracts, etc. and focused on building loyalty through value. Over time, we went up the ladder in the market and sold our affordable service into divisions within Fortune 500 companies, knocking out the competition but staying true to the disruptive innovation principles. The company was sold in 2007 for $6 million. Was this book worth the $20 or so that I paid for it? Absolutely. It's full of great material and thinking. Now that I've got the urge to start another company I'm reviewing it again, just for good measure. The principles in it are just as important as they were when I first read it.

The book repeats most everything from the "Dilemma" book and, unless readers want some interesting historical examples, there is no need to read the first. The most suitable prerequisites and circumstances for hatching successful disruptive businesses are explained in detail. These are suggested as the main route to predictable growth for existing and new companies. The book is quite repetitive and I suspect it to somewhat oversimplify complex issues, also using a scientific language while offering theories that aren't really proven. However the ideas presented and the clearly structured content convincingly offer the reader insights into margin fluctuations in the value network and the logic of growth. You quickly get used to the author calling him selves "we", like if the book was actually a scientific publication. Highly recommended, also if you have already read the "Dilemma" book.

Amazing insights for entrepreneurs and managers of the world. The elaborate examples of disruptions across B2B and B2C is thought provoking.

The book contains a great deal of substantive and well-researched theory, supported by data, and yet is reasonably easy to understand. The guidelines, if one wants to call them that, I sufficiently detailed to inform strategic decisions in business.

This book is mainly written about giant companies who need to grow faster than the stock market expects in order to increase the share price. As such, is this dilemma relevant to the small business market? The authors acknowledge they have written the book for big, established companies but state that the ideas will apply for start-up entrepreneurs. The book is based around answering a series of questions. 1) How can we beat our most powerful competitors? 2) What products should we develop? 3) Which initial customers will constitute the most viable foundation upon which to build a successful business? 4) Which activities required to design, produce, sell, and distribute our product should our company do internally, and which should we rely upon our partners and suppliers to provide? 5) How can we be sure that we maintain strong competitive advantages that yield attractive profits? 6) What is the best organizational structure for this venture? 7) How do we get the details of a winning strategy right? 8) Whose investment capital will help us succeed, and whose capital might be the kiss of death? 9) What role should the CEO play in sustaining the growth of the business? Each is the focus of a chapter along with answers the related questions. The first of these recaps the lead author's earlier book, The Innovator's Dilemma. This explains why markets are vulnerable to disruptive innovation in the low margin markets and small markets. It is fascinating because the process is remorseless yet seems so logical for incumbents. The next chapter urges market segmentation based on the job to be done by the customer. In my training, I use an example of the same person making very different choices for a restaurant for a romantic dinner, an important business lunch and a large family celebration. The use situation is often overlooked as people rush to segment by demographics or psychographics. Ironically, because the book is old, the big example used is the Blackberry device which was later swept to one side by the development of multi-purpose smartphones. I'm not going into each chapter in this review but I hope I've given you an indication of the scope and insight available from this excellent book. Are all markets open to disruptive innovation. Clearly technology products like computers and mobile phones are vulnerable. The Internet has undermined retail businesses but also financial services. Office cleaning or painting and decorating haven't yet been disrupted but are robots far away? The contents is essential both for offensive and defensive reasons. The world won't stand still so you need to understand how you can best protect what you have while also knowing how to develop the next set of products and services. One irritation is the book describes diagrams in the book, rather than using diagrams to summarise text explanations. If you read the kindle version on a small device, like I do, you will struggle. Sadly this is a common occurrence. What I particularly like about the book is that it's rooted in cause and effect logic. What is logical leads people in the wrong direction because they don't see the negative aspects and take actions to avoid the inevitable consequences. This reinforces my belief that executives don't think deeply enough. The book is written for the corporate market but with some effort it can be transferred to smaller businesses and entrepreneurs who have businesses that may be on either side i.e. they are the disruptors or they face being disrupted. Paul Simister helps frustrated business owners who are stuck get unstuck.

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Very good anlysis from many disruptirs comapny was showed along the reading of 5his book , but the end looked somehow uncertain - many doubts assaulted me after the epilogue.