I admit it.  I love good non-fiction books.  Consider this…

My blog’s title- Cerebrations- is in homage to Isaac Asimov.  Some 6 decades ago I read his two volume set- An Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science.  (One tome was devoted to physical sciences, the other to the biological). Within this set of books, Asimov used a word he created- cerebrations. And, it’s stuck with me ever since.  (By the way- how many of you noticed that this blog’s design changed dramatically two weeks ago?)

Later on, as my interests began to wander to business (OK- the business of health and technology), I latched onto Dr. Michael Porter.

 

 

Porter spent his career dealing with how companies succeed.  From his Competitive Strategy” to  “Competitive Advantage” to “The Competitive Advantage of Nations”, he covered the concepts of cost leadership, differentiation, and focus.  Which was one of the keys that our company employed to effet and improve the strategies of both large and small companies.

A few years later, Clayton Christensen developed the concept of “disruptive technologies”  In essence, Christensen turned Porter’s concept upside down.  Instead of learning how companies succeeded, understanding why companies failed became the focus.

By now, everyone knows about disruptive innovation.  Christensen kept us innovators on our toes.  Making sure we didn’t miss shifts in technology that would kill our entire business (or that of our client).  You know- like the railroads that forgot they provided transportation and became irrelevant to most of us.  Or, as we just saw as Ginni Rometti stepped down as head of IBM (because IBM kept its focus on big iron [massive computers] and lost its way as personal computers (although Gerstner managed to finesse this to some degree) and cloud computing conquered the marketplace, to be replaced by the head of cloud computing and the Red Hat firm IBM recently acquired.

But, what Christensen really did was told us how to think, rather than what or how to do things.  Instead of focusing on near-term results and profit margins, we need to build our teams, seek out ripples in the marketplace that can become tsunamis and wipe us off the map.

Clayton just passed away- at the relatively young age of 67 (23 January 2020) due to complications with leukemia.

A remarkable guy.  Like me, he read the entire World Book Encyclopedia (he did if four years after I did).  One who started his education at Brigham Young, honored as a Rhodes Scholar (Oxford, econometrics), a Harvard MBA, then acquired Harvard doctorate- and then capped off his efforts as a full professor 6 years later. (He also suffered a stroke and taught himself how to speak again.)

Some of the radical ideas he proposed some 25 years ago (“The Innovator’s Dilemma”) railed against biz school philosophy.  Instead of listening to our best customers and focusing on the ideas that would provide the best returns, we should always be on the lookout for things on the horizon, those disruptive technologies, often percolating at the bottom end of the market.

(By the way, it was Andy Grove, a fellow PhD Chem E, at the helm of Intel, that helped propel Christensen’s fame.  He called “The Innovator’s Dilemma” the most important book he’d read in a decade.)

We used Christensen’s teachings often.  With a radically new neurosurgical drill.  Ultraviolet irradiation of apple cider (giving it a long life and national distribution capability).  Liquid bicarbonate dialysis.  Colon lavage.  A high end, low flush commode.

But, some of those disruptive technologies upset industries far from their marketplace.  Consider our smartphones.  Sure, they are communication tools.  But, what if you own taxi cabs?  Or travel agencies?  Mapmakers?  Music companies (like CD’s)?  Even newspapers?  Get the idea?  The smartphone disrupted each and every one of those industries.

We all owe Dr. Christensen thanks for helping to expand our horizons.  But, we shouldn’t forget Porter’s teachings- we also need to know how companies succeed, as well.  Using both perspectives, we can avoid failure and acheive success!