From Publishers Weekly
Christensen (The Innovator's Dilemma) analyzes the strategies that allow corporations to successfully grow new businesses and outpace the other players in the marketplace. Christensen's earlier book examined how focusing on profits can destroy even well-run corporations, while this book focuses on companies expanding by being "disruptors" who are able to outpace their entrenched competition. The authors (Christensen is a professor at Harvard Business School and Raynor, a director at Deloitte Research) examine the nine business decisions integral to growth, including product development, organizational structure, financing and key customer base. They cite such companies as IBM, AT&T, Sony, Microsoft and others to illustrate their points. Generally, the writing is clear and specific. For example, in discussing whether a company has the resources necessary for growth, the authors say, "In order to be confident that managers have developed the skills required to succeed at a new assignment, one should examine the sorts of problems they have wrestled with in the past. It is not as important that managers have succeeded with the problem as it is for them to have wrestled with it and developed the skills and intuition for how to meet the challenge successfully the next time around"; they then provide a real-life example of a software company. Similar important strategies give readers insights that they can use in their own workplaces. People looking for quick fixes may find the charts, diagrams and extensive footnotes daunting, but readers familiar with more technical business management tomes will find this one both stimulating and beneficial.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From AudioFile
Two business analysts take a broad look at why it's important for companies to create innovative new products and markets. With a largely theoretical approach, they explain the limitations of empirical analysis with respect to new ideas and the drawbacks of focusing only on products that already have support in the market. Using familiar examples, they show how products that disrupt existing consumption patterns succeed, especially those that solve problems not being addressed by existing products. The intellectual clarity of this audio is invigorating, as heard in the perfectly appropriate and enjoyable smugness of Joel Leffert, who is the ideal interpreter of this rich material. T.W. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
