Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth

Denise Harrison reviews:

Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth
By Clayton M. Christensen & Michael E. Raynor
Harvard Business School Press, 2003, 303 pages, $29.95

Christensen's first book, Innovator's Dilemma analyzes how traditional market research into current customer needs and preferences can limit a company's growth potential. While focus on current customer's changing needs and preferences is important it is not in and of itself sufficient to create sustainable growth and profit. Typically current customers' thoughts and ideas help the company grow linearly, however, it is often disruptive innovation from outside the industry that blindsides a company causing unforeseen market turbulence.

Christensen's and Raynor's new book Innovator's Solution focuses on identifying disruptive innovation and using it to leapfrog the competition and generate sustainable growth. The book covers the following topics in developing a framework for taking advantage of disruptive change:

How can we tell if and idea has disruptive potential?
Which competitive situations favor incumbents and which favor entrants?
Which customer segments are primed to embrace a new offering?
Which activities should we outsource, and which should we keep in-house?
How should we structure and fund a new venture?
How do we choose the tight managers to lead it?
How can we position ourselves where profits will be made in the future?

The book provides useful tools to identify disruptive growth opportunities and take advantage of these shifts for sustainable growth and profitability. This book is a good compliment to the Industry Scenario/Winner's Profile worksheets in the Simplified Strategic Planning manual. Further reading on Innovation is available in CSSP's new book Innovation. This book contains a compilation of articles on innovation.

Denise Harrison is a consultant with Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc. She can be reached via e-mail at

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