How Steve Jobs Solved the Innovator's Dilemma

hype7 writes "With yesterday's release of the Steve Jobs biography, a raft of interesting information has come to light — including Jobs' favorite books. There's one book there listed as 'profoundly moving' to Jobs — The Innovator's Dilemma by innovation professor Clayton Christensen. The book explains how in the pursuit of profit, good managers leave their companies open to disruption. There's an interesting article over at the Harvard Business Review that explains how disruption works, and how Jobs managed to solve the dilemma by focusing Apple on products rather than profit."

Comments

Copy it

[Intropy]

When someone innovates, copy it, make it really shiny, market it extensively, and sell it at a large markup.

Cue the haters

[bonch]

Cue the Apple haters who can't stand an Apple story on the front page of Slashdot. They've been bitching and moaning all week.

Apple's focus on product was obvious when they introduced the iPod nano to replace the iPod mini at the height of the iPod mini's popularity. Few other companies would have stopped selling one of their most successful products or changed the product's name.

Re:Nice if you can do it

[syousef]

History is littered with the wreckage of companies that decided to change direction, diverting resources from existing customers to look for fresh fields. Apple somehow managed to do it several times to great success.

Look around at the idiotic fanboism. That is exactly how they managed to do it. They managed to market their brand so well that if Apple put out an iTurd all their fans would bemoan the days before the enlightenment when they had to live with their own inferior excrement, while others would deny turds existed before Apple made one. Once they managed that, they were trading on reputation - it doesn't matter what they're selling. It is unfortunate for them that so much of what has been called a "reality distortion field" was focused around Jobs the man. If they aren't able to maintain it in the post-Jobs era, they're sunk. The products are at best mediocre, oversimplified, inflexible and prescriptive compared to the competition. If they are forced to compete on merit Windows/Linux and Android will have them for breakfast.