Joshua Gans’s new book
[amazon_image id=”0262034484″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Disruption Dilemma[/amazon_image]
As Gans points out, ‘disruption’ has become an over-used term, so he is specific about addressing fundamental shifts in the landscape. Where Christensen and many of his successors have focused on defences against the demand side of disruption where a new entrant offers a product to a niche group of customers, Gans is interested in the supply-side, when the disruptions use an entirely new technology or approach to production. For this means the incumbent businesses find it very hard to respond. To do so effectively means completely redrawing the fundamentals of how they produce their product or service. The book advisers readers not to worry about ‘demand side’ disruptions but to focus their efforts on how to prepare for a ‘supply side’ event
Counter-intuitively, one of Gans’s defensive strategies is to run a highly integrated organisation that is in the habit of working on a sequence of innovations – which runs contrary to the usual advice to ‘disrupt yourself’ with some kind of skunk works. This is the dilemma of the title: if you run a highly integrated business, then you can’t try the independent unit option. The other strategies are: ensure you have some unique complementary assets (something
This all seems sensible advice and the case studies cited are very interesting. I have to say, though, that although Gans concludes than
Even for the non-paranoid and possibly over-relaxed, this is a nice, concise overview of the disruption debate and possible responses. It is firmly rooted in proper research, the best kind of business book.
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