In Understanding the Dilemma we can find a Solution

"Knowing the how, of the competitions disruption provides a solutions"

"The theory holds that existing companies have a high probability of beating entrant attackers when the contest is about sustaining innovations. But established companies almost always lose to attackers armed with disruptive innovations."
(Christensen 2004 - Seeing What's Next)

Established businesses most of the time aim to provide the resources needed to provide for their best customers in the way of products and services. The problem is that it can provide a blind spot to new products and services that are initially targeted at the small seemingly unprofitable customer. As this type of approach is not feasible to the established business they forgo this business feeling that it frees them up to work in the higher end of the market. The real dilemma is the new businesses evolve and sometime at a more rapid pass than expected, in turn taking over the marketplace. The mark of disruptive innovation is usually, simple, cheap and revolutionary.

The Innovator's Solution reveals a powerful set of theories that assist in the challenges and explains how to go about creating a new growth business which is being challenged by disruptive innovation. The first part is to recognise the signs of disruptive innovation and having a strategy and model to counter.



From my understanding the low-end disruptor comes under the radar and targets the overshot customers with a lower cost business model. That is not the issue at first this market is usually unprofitable to the established business. These businesses tend to falls into a comfort zone, until the low-end disruptor starts to evolve. As the disruptor starts to sustain and improve this change can and does catch the established businesses off guard. The new business starts to focus can and has done in the past removed the incumbent.

What is needed is for the incumbent to earn their disruptive black belt. This is usually done with the company setting up their own disruptive counterattack and developing internal capabilities in disruptive growth. Many companies try this and usually need to create a spin out organisation to drive the disruption, as the current model and culture is usually not the best structure to build such an organisation. The book outlines a four pronged approach which is covered in more detail in chapter 10.

1. Start before it needs to
2. Appoint a senior executive to shepherd ideas into the appropriate shaping and resource-allocation process
3. Create a team and process for shaping ideas
4. train the troops to identify disruptive ideas

As I get further into these books I will update these postings