Competing Against Luck

Author: Clayton M. Christensen
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062435639
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 259

Book Description
The foremost authority on innovation and growth presents a path-breaking book every company needs to transform innovation from a game of chance to one in which they develop products and services customers not only want to buy, but are willing to pay premium prices for. How do companies know how to grow? How can they create products that they are sure customers want to buy? Can innovation be more than a game of hit and miss? Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen has the answer. A generation ago, Christensen revolutionized business with his groundbreaking theory of disruptive innovation. Now, he goes further, offering powerful new insights. After years of research, Christensen has come to one critical conclusion: our long held maxim—that understanding the customer is the crux of innovation—is wrong. Customers don’t buy products or services; they "hire" them to do a job. Understanding customers does not drive innovation success, he argues. Understanding customer jobs does. The "Jobs to Be Done" approach can be seen in some of the world’s most respected companies and fast-growing startups, including Amazon, Intuit, Uber, Airbnb, and Chobani yogurt, to name just a few. But this book is not about celebrating these successes—it’s about predicting new ones. Christensen contends that by understanding what causes customers to "hire" a product or service, any business can improve its innovation track record, creating products that customers not only want to hire, but that they’ll pay premium prices to bring into their lives. Jobs theory offers new hope for growth to companies frustrated by their hit and miss efforts. This book carefully lays down Christensen’s provocative framework, providing a comprehensive explanation of the theory and why it is predictive, how to use it in the real world—and, most importantly, how not to squander the insights it provides.

How Will You Measure Your Life? (Harvard Business Review Classics)

Author: Clayton M. Christensen
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
ISBN: 1633692574
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 28

Book Description
In the spring of 2010, Harvard Business School’s graduating class asked HBS professor Clay Christensen to address them—but not on how to apply his principles and thinking to their post-HBS careers. The students wanted to know how to apply his wisdom to their personal lives. He shared with them a set of guidelines that have helped him find meaning in his own life, which led to this now-classic article. Although Christensen’s thinking is rooted in his deep religious faith, these are strategies anyone can use. Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice. The Harvard Business Review Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world.

The Prosperity Paradox

Author: Clayton M. Christensen
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062851837
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Book Description
New York Times–bestselling Author: “Powerful . . . a compelling case for the game-changing role of innovation in some of the world’s most desperate economies.” —Eric Schmidt, former Executive Chairman, Google and Alphabet Clayton M. Christensen, author of such business classics as The Innovator’s Dilemma and How Will You Measure Your Life, and co-authors Efosa Ojomo and Karen Dillon reveal why so many investments in economic development fail to generate sustainable prosperity, and offer a groundbreaking solution for true and lasting change. Global poverty is one of the world’s most vexing problems. For decades, we’ve assumed smart, well-intentioned people will eventually be able to change the economic trajectory of poor countries. From education to healthcare, building infrastructure to eradicating corruption, too many solutions rely on trial and error. Essentially, the plan is often to identify areas that need help, flood them with resources, and hope to see change over time. But hope is not an effective strategy. At least twenty countries that have received billions of dollars’ worth of aid are poorer now. Applying the rigorous and theory-driven analysis he is known for, Christensen suggests a better way. The right kind of innovation not only builds companies—but also builds countries. The Prosperity Paradox identifies the limits of common economic development models, which tend to be top-down efforts, and offers a new framework for economic growth based on entrepreneurship and market-creating innovation. Christensen, Ojomo, and Dillon use successful examples from America’s own economic development, including Ford, Eastman Kodak, and Singer Sewing Machines, and shows how similar models have worked in other regions such as Japan, South Korea, Nigeria, Rwanda, India, Argentina, and Mexico. The ideas in this book will help companies desperate for real, long-term growth see actual, sustainable progress where they’ve failed before. But The Prosperity Paradox is more than a business book—it is a call to action for anyone who wants a fresh take for making the world a better and more prosperous place.

The Clayton M. Christensen Reader

Author: Clayton M. Christensen
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
ISBN: 1633691004
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
The best of Clayton Christensen’s seminal work on disruptive innovation, all in one place. No business can afford to ignore the theory of disruptive innovation. But the nuances of Clayton Christensen’s foundational thinking on the subject are often forgotten or misinterpreted. To achieve continuing growth in your business while defending against upstarts, you need to understand clearly what disruption is and how it works, and know how it applies to your industry and your company. In this collection of Christensen’s most influential articles—carefully selected by Harvard Business Review’s editors—his incisive arguments, clear theories, and readable stories give you the tools you need to understand disruption and what to do about it. The collection features Christensen’s newest article looking back on 20 years of disruptive innovation: what it is, and what it isn’t. Covering a broad spectrum of topics—business model innovation, mergers and acquisitions, value-chain shifts, financial incentives, product development—these articles illuminate the impact and implications of disruptive innovation as well as Christensen’s broader thinking on management theory and its application in business and in life. This collection of best-selling articles includes: “Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave,” by Joseph L. Bower and Clayton M. Christensen, “Meeting the Challenge of Disruptive Change,” by Clayton M. Christensen and Michael Overdorf, “Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and the Cure,” by Clayton M. Christensen, Scott Cook, and Taddy Hall, “Innovation Killers: How Financial Tools Destroy Your Capacity to Do New Things,” by Clayton M. Christensen, Stephen P. Kaufman, and Willy C. Shih, “Reinventing Your Business Model,” by Mark W. Johnson, Clayton M. Christensen, and Henning Kagermann, “The New M&A Playbook,” by Clayton M. Christensen, Richard Alton, Curtis Rising, and Andrew Waldeck, “Skate to Where the Money Will Be,” by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael E. Raynor, and Matthew Verlinden, “Surviving Disruption,” by Maxwell Wessel and Clayton M. Christensen, “What Is Disruptive Innovation?” by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael E. Raynor, and Rory McDonald, “Why Hard-Nosed Executives Should Care About Management Theory,” by Clayton M. Christensen and Michael E. Raynor, and “How Will You Measure Your Life?” by Clayton M. Christensen.

Innovation and the General Manager

Author: Clayton M. Christensen
Publisher: McGraw-Hill/Irwin
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 604

Book Description
General manager's instruction kit for managing innovation, this text was developed from the author's course at Harvard Business School and is designed to help students and managers learn to address the issues related to managing innovation more effectively.

The Secret Lives of Customers

Author: David S Duncan
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1541774485
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
A "detective story" that delivers key insights for any businessperson asking the questions: who really are our customers, why do we lose them, how do we regain them? Customers can be a mystery. Despite the availability of more data than ever before, everyone, from the CEO to salespeople in the field, struggles to understand who their customers really are, what they want, why they lose them, and how to regain them. To crack the case, start thinking like a market detective. David Scott Duncan shows how in his entertaining story of Tazza, a fictional chain of cafes with declining sales and leaders urgently seeking to understand why. The vivid characters of Tazza’s market detective force come to their aha moment when they finally understand why their most loyal customers walked out the door—and how they can get them back. The core of the Tazza story is a simple, powerful idea that upends how most businesses view their customers. Customers have “jobs to be done.” They “hire” companies to solve a problem or fulfill a need and “fire” them when unhappy. Duncan’s fresh way of thinking about how to understand your customers’ secret lives provides an innovative path for solving whatever market mysteries you face.

The Innovator's Dilemma

Author: Clayton M. Christensen
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
ISBN: 1422197581
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Book Description
Named one of 100 Leadership & Success Books to Read in a Lifetime by Amazon Editors An innovation classic. From Steve Jobs to Jeff Bezos, Clay Christensen’s work continues to underpin today’s most innovative leaders and organizations. The bestselling classic on disruptive innovation, by renowned author Clayton M. Christensen. His work is cited by the world’s best-known thought leaders, from Steve Jobs to Malcolm Gladwell. In this classic bestseller—one of the most influential business books of all time—innovation expert Clayton Christensen shows how even the most outstanding companies can do everything right—yet still lose market leadership. Christensen explains why most companies miss out on new waves of innovation. No matter the industry, he says, a successful company with established products will get pushed aside unless managers know how and when to abandon traditional business practices. Offering both successes and failures from leading companies as a guide, The Innovator’s Dilemma gives you a set of rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation. Sharp, cogent, and provocative—and consistently noted as one of the most valuable business ideas of all time—The Innovator’s Dilemma is the book no manager, leader, or entrepreneur should be without.

Jobs to Be Done

Author: Anthony W. Ulwick
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780990576747
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
Why do some innovation projects succeed where others fail? The book reveals the business implications of Jobs Theory and explains how to put Jobs Theory into practice using Outcome-Driven Innovation.

The Innovator's Solution

Author: Clayton
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
ISBN: 1422196585
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 317

Book Description
An innovation classic. From Steve Jobs to Jeff Bezos, Clay Christensen’s work continues to underpin today’s most innovative leaders and organizations. A seminal work on disruption—for everyone confronting the growth paradox. For readers of the bestselling The Innovator’s Dilemma—and beyond—this definitive work will help anyone trying to transform their business right now. In The Innovator’s Solution, Clayton Christensen and Michael Raynor expand on the idea of disruption, explaining how companies can and should become disruptors themselves. This classic work shows just how timely and relevant these ideas continue to be in today’s hyper-accelerated business environment. Christensen and Raynor give advice on the business decisions crucial to achieving truly disruptive growth and propose guidelines for developing your own disruptive growth engine. The authors identify the forces that cause managers to make bad decisions as they package and shape new ideas—and offer new frameworks to help create the right conditions, at the right time, for a disruption to succeed. This is a must-read for all senior managers and business leaders responsible for innovation and growth, as well as members of their teams. Based on in-depth research and theories tested in hundreds of companies across many industries, The Innovator’s Solution is a necessary addition to any innovation library—and an essential read for entrepreneurs and business builders worldwide.

Designing Products People Love

Author: Scott Hurff
Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."
ISBN: 1491923660
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
How can you create products that successfully find customers? With this practical book, you’ll learn from some of the best product designers in the field, from companies like Facebook and LinkedIn to up-and-coming contenders. You’ll understand how to discover and interpret customer pain, and learn how to use this research to guide your team through each step of product creation. Written for designers, product managers, and others who want to communicate better with designers, this book is essential reading for anyone who contributes to the product creation process. Understand exactly who your customers are, what they want, and how to build products that make them happy Learn frameworks and principles that successful product designers use Incorporate five states into every screen of your interface to improve conversions and reduce perceived loading times Discover meeting techniques that Apple, Amazon, and LinkedIn use to help teams solve the right problems and make decisions faster Design effective interfaces across different form factors by understanding how people hold devices and complete tasks Learn how successful designers create working prototypes that capture essential customer feedback Create habit-forming and emotionally engaging experiences, using the latest psychological research