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Name of
Subject
Management of Technology Instructor Prof. Masanori NAMABA
ID No: 52110004 Name Nguyen Hoang Anh
Title THE INNOVATORS SOLUTION Creating and sustaining successful
growth (By Clayton M. Christensen & Michael E. Raynor)

(Chapter 1: The Growth Imperative and Chapter 2: How can we beat our most powerful
competitors?)
1. Important points
1.1 The forces that shape innovation: The system, opinions and feedback from
significant customers, Personal factors.
1.2 Predictability comes from Good Theory
1.3 A sustaining-technology strategy is not a viable way to build new growth business
1.4 A disruptive business model is a valuable corporate asset.
2. Pros
2.1 The system mandates that midlevel managers support their proposals with credible
data on the size and growth potential of the markets that each idea targets. Opinions and
feedback from significant customers add immeasurably to the credibility of claims that an
idea has potential. And personal factors, such as promotion encourage midlevel managers
to promote new-growth ideas.
2.2 Every time managers make plans or take action, it is based on a mental model in the
back of their heads that leads them to believe that the action being taken will lead to the
desired result. The problem is that managers are rarely aware of the theories they are using
and they often use the wrong theories for the situation they are in. It is the absence of
conscious, trustworthy theories of cause and effect that makes success in building new
businesses seem random.
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2.3 If you are new comers, you can lack of financial power, experience about products
and customers, good knowledge about the existing technologies. Therefore, it is very hard
to beat the incumbents. Furthermore, if you create and attempt to sell a better product into
an established market to capture established competitors best customers, the competitors
will be motivated to fight rather than to flee.
2.4 Many of the most profitable growth trajectories in history have been initiated by
disruptive innovations. Because the established companys course of action is mandated so
clearly, it is also clear what executives who seek to create new-growth businesses should
do: Target products and markets that the established companies are motivated to ignore or
run away from.
3. Cons and my thoughts
3.1 The authors offered three approaches to creating new-growth businesses: sustaining
innovations, low-end disruptions and new-market disruptions. It seems that low-end
disruptions and new-market disruptions are suitable strategies for new entrants while
sustaining innovations is ideal for incumbents. However, I do not think low-end
disruptions and new-market disruptions are sustainable, prolonged for entrants. There is
not any innovation here. It seems like price strategy and target niche markets of
mainstream market.
3.2 We cannot know in advance which growth strategies would succeed and which
would fail. Among established firms, it is difficult to implement disruption strategies to
beat competitors. The author still did not answer the big question How can we beat our
most powerful competitors? The disruptive strategies which the author offered for new
entrants is just the way to avoid the competition of existing powerful firms, not the way to
beat them.
3.3 My thoughts:
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The authors argued that disruption has proven to be such a consistently effective strategy
for causing strong incumbent competitors to flee from their entrant attackers, rather than
fight them. I think it is a kind of blue-ocean strategy or make your competitors
irrelevant. Blue Ocean Strategy is a proven system for making competition irrelevant by
creating new market spaces through simultaneous achievement of differentiation and low
cost. Instead of being locked in red oceans of fierce, bloody competition, you can apply
Blue Ocean Strategy to move to clear, uncontested waters of highly profitable growth.
4. Questions:
4.1 I do not understand well about the definition asymmetric motivation. Could you
explain more?
4.2 Whether we can combine sustainable innovations and disruptions together or not?
4.3 Could Incumbents apply low-end disruptions and new-market disruptions
strategies? Are those strategies only suitable for new entrants?