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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."
Apple managed to turn profits by outsourceing the actual production so they could focus on design.
Part of a 101 Business class, that is. You know, that class that all the football players ace.
Growing a business, expanding market share, increasing sales revenues in a competitive market place all require taking risks, otherwise known as 'disruption'. Good managers know how to stay focused on the risk, not avoid it. Meanwhile, they minimize unneeded risks, or issues that divert the organization's attention from their primary goal. There is a very good correlation between risk and ROI. No risk means your investors had better be willing to live with T-bill like returns.
You want no disruption? Go into a government bureaucracy or get a job in a large corporation away from the principle line of business*.
* The problem here is that its easy for companies to outsource these tasks. So in the final analysis, you are still exposed to risk. That which involves turning your job over to leaner, more competitive service providers.
Have gnu, will travel.
You know, as a devout capitalist, I've always believed that customers service comes first.
A capitalist of the Adam Smith variety would say that profit comes first, and that good customer service and mutual benefit is a consequence of pursuing profit.
The fact that this doesn't work under a lot of different contexts, particularly the ones that Harvard MBAs get themselves learned in, is the guts of the story.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Laying off thousands of people, cutting hundreds of product lines to focus on three main products which are beginning to stagnate is hardly 'innovative'. It's hardly a good idea either.
Under Jobs, Apple went from nearly bankrupt to the biggest, most successful company in the world in just 14 years. Congratulations - by claiming that it was all a bad idea, you've just made what must be the stupidest post of the day. And I'm including all the Frist psots! in that.