Disruptive innovation

A recent edition of Fortune describes innovations in computer gaming that are likely to be as disruptive to incumbent players like Electronic Arts and Activision as the move toward cloud computing is to providers of shrink-wrapped software. While the incumbents have been engaged in the innovation equivalent of an arms race – ever more powerful […]

Disclosure: The author is a shareholder in AOL. It’s been funny watching the financial press and the tech community eviscerate AOL’s Patch.com since last week’s disappointing earnings call. The irony is that Patch is AOL’s last, best chance to build a growth engine. Investors shouldn’t be calling for AOL to back off the business. They […]

We're going to have plenty of media and journalism in coming years and decades. I take this for granted. But will we have enough information and journalism...

And it's realizing that now.

Luxury jewelers should be willing to part with low-end customers.

For the past 20 years, the theory of disruptive innovation has been enormously influential in business circles and a powerful tool for predicting which...

The blogosphere's response to Google's announcement late yesterday about its plans to release an operating system in the second half of 2010 was swift...

Scott Anthony, president of Innosight, argues that disruptive innovation occurs when an innovator brings something to market that is simple, convenient,...

In The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton Christensen showed how entrants have overwhelming advantages over established companies in battles of disruptive innovation. Subsequently, Christensen and Innosight have argued that incumbents can tilt the odds in their favor by organizing and acting in the right ways. It’s a nice conceptual argument. Does the data support it? Earlier this […]

It was 5 pm on August 9. I had just settled down for the three hour journey from Singapore to Manila. The seat next to me was empty, so after surreptitiously checking email one last time before takeoff, I switched my iPhone to airplane mode, and left it face down on the seat. After I […]

There are disruptive signs in the market's low end.

Acquisitions were an important driver of Match’s growth.

Not every awesome innovation is “disruptive.”

Bricks and mortar apparel stores have largely escaped disruption — until now.

For a long time, Ford, Chrysler, and GM followed the same strategy: they built big gas-guzzlers. Asian competitors attacked that model, took market share, and transformed the U.S. automobile industry. Also for a long time, Yahoo and AOL offered email customers 4MB of storage. Google came out with Gmail and provided a free 1GB email […]

I am on record of being “long” on innovation in Asia, and I continue to feel tremendous innovation energy in the region. I’ve seen fascinating developments inside both big companies and emerging startups. But observations during two recent meetings made me wonder about the degree to which Asia needs a “Woodstock moment” to realize its […]

Airbnb's legal travails raise the question: how free should you be to rent out your place?

Two weeks ago, I was in Texas to talk with the leadership group of Christus Health, a hospital and health-care company based in Dallas. Christus has 9,000 doctors, 30,000 employees, and major facilities in six US states as well as in Mexico. In addition to being a world-class organization, it is a devoutly religious company–its […]

The arrival of summer means trips to the beach, fireworks and parades–and another boffo performance by the creative geniuses at Pixar. The studio’s just-released summer movie, Wall-E, has generated rapturous reviews, record-setting ticket sales, and loads of cultural commentary. More than anything, though, Wall-E has generated amazement from Hollywood observers at Pixar’s capacity to generate […]

Just before he stepped down as CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs tried to buy Dropbox for Apple. But he and Dropbox founder, Drew Houston, had a dispute about what Dropbox was. Jobs had claimed it was “a feature, not a product.” I agreed, much to the consternation of some. This week saw the “feature” story […]