Give Responsibility for Disruptive Technologies to Organizations Whose Customers Need Them

by Clayton M. Christensen

Although most executives believe they make the crucial decisions in their organizations, in fact it is a company's customers who effectively control what it can and cannot do. Through a survival-of-the-fittest mechanism, those firms that rise to prominence in their industries generally will be those whose people and processes are most keenly tuned to giving their customers what they want.

This chapter emphasizes that if new technologies are not yet accepted by a company's customer base, it may often be advisable to create an independent, embedded organization focused on the disruptive opportunity before moving the whole company in the new direction.

This chapter was originally published as chapter 5 of "The Innovator's When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail."

21 pages, Paperback

First published June 11, 1997

About the author

Clayton Magleby Christensen was an American academic and business consultant who developed the theory of "disruptive innovation", which has been called the most influential business idea of the early 21st century. Christensen introduced "disruption" in his 1997 book The Innovator's Dilemma, and it led The Economist to term him "the most influential management thinker of his time." He served as the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School (HBS), and was also a leader and writer in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). He was one of the founders of the Jobs to Be Done development methodology.
Christensen was also a co-founder of Rose Park Advisors, a venture capital firm, and Innosight, a management consulting and investment firm specializing in innovation.