When successful and well-managed firms fail, we call this disruption. In the almost two decades since Clay Christensen’s famous treatise mapping this phenomenon, such failure has continued, with companies such as Encyclopedia Britannica, Blockbuster, Nokia, and RIM all falling hard from positions of seemingly unassailable dominance. In each case, they either did not or could not respond to disruptive events that allowed new entrants to capture their markets. At the same time, however, other major firms have had sustained success, shielded from what could have been dominance-ending disruptive e ... More

When successful and well-managed firms fail, we call this disruption. In the almost two decades since Clay Christensen’s famous treatise mapping this phenomenon, such failure has continued, with companies such as Encyclopedia Britannica, Blockbuster, Nokia, and RIM all falling hard from positions of seemingly unassailable dominance. In each case, they either did not or could not respond to disruptive events that allowed new entrants to capture their markets. At the same time, however, other major firms have had sustained success, shielded from what could have been dominance-ending disruptive events. This book takes the experience of both the fallen and the resilient and identifies Disruption’s Shield, the principles and actions that can ensure great firms’ continued success. The headline theory of disruption is now known to all, but that has not alleviated the risks faced by major firms nor the litany of failures. This is because a good defense has to guard against all disruptive events. Up until now, only one set of disruptive forces – those coming from the demand-side – have been fully understood and driven into manager’s mindsets. But this single-minded focus has led many firms to neglect equally important supply-side forces. This type of disruption can occur when firms, focussing on developing new products based on current technologies quickly, find themselves inflexible and unresponsive when their greatest competitive threats come not from seemingly niche entrants but from technologies that re-write organizational rulebooks. Only by understanding both types of disruptive risk can business leaders understand, evaluate and deploy the full range of options to avoid disruption and continue to thrive. The Disruption Dilemma is the first book that puts all of these elements together. It identifies the system of choices that have allowed great firms to balance competitiveness and resilience.