Somewhere in a dark cubicle in the bowels of the Harvard Business School, there is an Artificial Intelligence network gathering research both primary and secondary, grinding it through the known intelligence systems and spitting out page after page of useful guidance for the waiting minds of business people trying to make sense of a chaotic world. Buy at amazon.com.
This is how it must be because surely one person (even with the help of willing graduate students and aligned consultants) couldn’t produce the ever-quickening flow of books that are being released under the name of Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business School professor and perhaps the world’s only real challenge to the legendary business-guru status of Peter Drucker.
The Christensen pronouncements began with the Innovator’s Dilemma in mid-1997, picked up steam with the Innovator’s Solution in the fall of 2003 and then amazingly enough tossed us another full meal to digest less than a year later in Seeing What’s Next, Using the Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change. I loved the first book, was amazed that the second was even better than the first (a rare occurrence) and had no hopes for the third … until I sat down to read it.
While Dilemma and Solution tell us how to succeed by overcoming the barriers to innovation, Next shows us how to recognize the signals of change that could easily rock our world. Imagine confidently recognizing the potential of Google or Ebay (before the rest of the pack). Or what if you could read the signals being transmitted by the health care or telecommunications industies and understood how they might affect your industry or company? Just as importantly, what if you could use these signals to more successfully weave your way through the constantly changing landscape in order to develop products and services that create new value for your customers and for you?
It’s a tall order but as usual Christensen and crew deliver. This isn’t a simple, fun read but it is worth putting some time and thought into the theories and how they relate to you and your world. Next does boil down very complex thinking into three primary elements of a predictive model:
1. Look for signals of change
2. Evaluate competitive battles
3. Watch important strategic choices.
We will provide some additional thinking on each of these elements in future messages … but, for now, we suggest that you click on over to amazon and buy the book if you don’t already have it. It’s another must read for every manager’s bookshelf … and for all of you investment-types, this might help you spot the next Google. (The authors offer no guarantees along this line, of course!)
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