In response to Divakar’s post about the problem with established companies innovating, here are some relevant talks to listen to:
- Clay Christensen – Mr. Innovator’s Dilemma himself. As I recall, he summarized The Innovator’s Dilemma and his new thinking, The Innovator’s Solution.
- The Comedy of the Commons – though he doesn’t explicitly link the innovator’s dilemma line of thinking with what he’s talking about, the IP issues Lawrence Lessig talks about are directly related to the inability of well established IP-markets to innovate new ways of satisfying their customers.
- Along those same lines, related to this is a panel discussion from Web 2.0 on digital music, esp. Cory Doctorow’s question/monologue during at the end. The point of these two recordings is that traditional media and other IP-based businesses are seemingly incapable of innovating new business models that work with the way consumers want to consume that IP (music, software, TV, movies, etc.).
The point of all of this is that a fat and happy company — or, a fat and happy exec working at a not-so fat and not-so happy company, as Divakar frames it — has little incentive to come up with new ways of doing things. It’s the power of the status quo.
Advertisement
So far, I’ve only listened to the Clay Christensen offering, but I must say that is some very good stuff. A little long (at 1 hour and 48 minutes), but ultimately filled with little jewels like “competition against non-consumption” and “a low cost strategy is only viable as long as there is a high cost competitor around.”
If more marketing people or corporate execs talked like him, I might have more respect for them.