Many students of Clayton Christensen’s will be familiar with the US Steel case that he wrote as a graduate student in the 1990s, one that is still used today in the BSSE curriculum at Harvard Business School. The case tells the story of the minimills’ low-end disruption of US Steel, entering the market with rebar and then steadily moving up-market to bars & rods, then on to structural steel, and finally to sheet steel at the high end of the market. The incumbent, US Steel, was caught in a classic example of what Clay called “the innovator’s dilemma”, losing its position of leadership precisely because management made logical and competent decisions along the way. In this episode, we highlight another great example of a low-end disruptor, Norsk Titanium. The company successfully entered the low end of the metal manufacturing market and now, like the minimills before it, is planning its disruptive march up-market. Hosted by Katie Zandbergen, Mike Canario, CEO of Norsk Titanium, tells the story of Norsk’s humble beginnings in Norway; how it came to build the largest 3D printing factory in the world; the many benefits of its innovative and enabling technology, Rapid Plasma Deposition; and how management is looking to the minimill playbook as it charts its course to higher levels of the market.  Mike offers lessons in management, innovation, and low-end disruption that we hope you’ll find inspiring and useful!

Anna Marie Wagner from Ginkgo Bioworks discusses the transformative potential of bioengineering and the barriers to biotech development, showcasing Ginkgo's platform solution for biological innovation. Topics include fearlessness in entrepreneurship, revenue models in bioengineering, disrupting the synthetic biology industry, navigating pandemic challenges, and transitioning to startup culture.

Elliott Parker, an expert in venture capital, discusses remodeling the industry by reintroducing a partnership model through venture studios. Topics include self-disruption for established businesses, collaborating with startups, and selecting venture building partners based on strategic alignment and active engagement.

Michelle Weise is an expert in higher education and in the development of more innovative workforce and talent pipelines. A former Senior Research Fellow in Higher Education at The Christensen Institute, she joined us on The Disruptive Voice to reflect on her career over the last decade, which has concentrated on preparing working-age adults for the jobs of both today and tomorrow. Hosted by Katie Zandbergen, they discuss Michelle's experiences working with Clayton Christensen, her thoughts on the disruptive potential of online competency-based education, her time in the role of Chief Innovation Officer at Southern New Hampshire University (where she lived the innovator’s dilemma!) and, of course, her newly-published book, “Long Life Learning: Preparing for Jobs That Don’t Even Exist Yet”.  In that book, Michelle considers questions of huge consequence, including “Can a four year degree earned at the beginning of a 100 year career possibly prepare us for all that is to come in our professional lives?”, “Why is education overdue for momentous changes?”, and “How can the existing education system adapt in order to meet the needs of a new generation of workers?” She takes listeners on a journey from considerations of our current system of education and learners’ engagement with the labor market to designing and building a learning ecosystem that better meets the needs of all of us, the future’s working learners. This conversation is a fascinating listen for anyone interested in higher education, the labor market, and the future of work in an age of longevity.

Over a year ago, The Forum for Growth & Innovation team ventured to North Carolina to learn about the ways in which a group of innovators had spread the gospel of disruption to the senior leadership of Atrium Health.  Regular listeners of the podcast may remember when we interviewed Atrium's Ann-Somers Hogg on her experience of studying the theories of Disruptive Innovation and Jobs To Be Done as an executive education participant at HBS, before bringing the learnings and language home to her team at Atrium Health and spreading it to senior leadership, including through enrollment in HBS Online's Disruptive Strategy course.  This week, we are delighted to release, at long last, a conversation with the mind behind the mission: Jean Wright, MD/MBA, the former Chief Innovation Officer at Atrium Health. In her position, Jean was well aware of the challenges of disruption facing her industry and sought out ways to build a culture of innovation and learning at Atrium, for instance, by sending her employees to study at Harvard, Stanford, and MIT for executive education courses. This podcast was originally research material that was used by The Forum for Growth & Innovation to develop a case study of disruption in the healthcare industry. However, we thought it so compelling that we knew we had to share it with you as well. Dr. Wright offers lessons by example and experience in leadership, management, and innovation that we know you'll find inspiring and useful.

Online grocery shopping isn't (really) catching on. While there has been real growth in the number of Americans who shop for groceries online in 2020, even in the midst of a global pandemic, the vast majority of customers choose to shop in person. Why?  This week on The Disruptive Voice, we're delighted to bring you José Vicente Aguerrevere and Max Pedró, co-founders of Takeoff Technologies, for a look behind the scenes at their efforts to build and sustain a technology company aimed at eliminating a major barrier to online grocery retailing. After taking BSSE with Professor Christensen, Max and José graduated from HBS as Baker Scholars in 2002, pursued careers in blue chip banking, consulting, and retail firms, and fourteen years later felt called to co-found a technology firm. Based on the idea that finding the right trade-offs could make online grocery retailing cost effective to both the retailer and customer, Max and José have turned their start-up into a global company. Hosted by Anibha Singh, Max and José discuss the genesis of the business, their rapid scaling efforts, the evolution of the grocery industry during the coronavirus pandemic, and their vision of an ecosystem of efficient fulfillment across industries. We hope you enjoy this engaging and thought-provoking episode!

When was the last time you heard your best friend's voice? This question is at the heart of this week's episode of The Disruptive Voice. We're now seven months into a global pandemic that has torn and kept friends and families apart. In the midst of all this distance and distress, many are searching for ways to deeply and authentically connect with those they love. That's why we reached out to Amelia Lin, an alumna of HBS and Harvard College who is in the early stages of developing a social media platform called Saga that enables a refreshingly personal form of connection. Saga is a personal family podcast app designed to facilitate and store family histories, and one that has recently transformed into a new kind of social network. In this episode, Amelia discusses the story behind the app, some of the ways that it is currently being used, and the power of intimate, shared spaces to reshape our social media futures. She is hosted by Chris Diak, Program Assistant at The Forum and an M.Div. candidate at Harvard Divinity School. Announcement: Saga has graciously created a group for us to share our memories of Clayton Christensen and create a personal podcast dedicated to him. You can join our channel now, Remembering Clay, to hear others' memories of Clay and share your own (iOS only). Invite code is QOLTHN. https://trysaga.app.link/Z4Rm6cTvDab?joinCode=QOLTHN We'd love to hear from you! If you have any questions, please reach out to fgi@hbs.edu. Thank you.

Bob Moesta, President & CEO of the Re-Wired Group, discusses the importance of teaching sales in MBA programs and shares insights from his book 'Demand-Side Sales 101'. He explores the Jobs To Be Done theory, uncovering customers' jobs, and the forces of progress in demand-side sales. Additionally, he highlights the skills of an innovator and their application in challenging times like the COVID-19 pandemic.

This week, as the New York City public schools scramble to re-open and students across the country settle into routines that are anything but routine, we checked in with Michael Horn to hear his views on the state of education amidst the pandemic. Michael is a widely published researcher, strategist, and innovator who co-founded The Clayton Christensen Institute and currently serves as Senior Strategist at Guild Education. Hosted by Christopher Diak, Program Assistant at The Forum and an M.Div. candidate at Harvard Divinity School, Michael discusses the acceleration of disruption under the pandemic, the "educator's dilemma" of business model innovation with competing value propositions, and the ways he personally is adapting to the pandemic using a learning pod approach, among several other timely topics.

Over the course of the twentieth century, the growth of the consulting industry was fueled by a series of sustaining innovations that strongly influenced the practice of management and corporate strategy. As a result, leading consulting firms today have well-defined value propositions and business models, offering premium, high cost services to a relatively small pool of clients, while simultaneously creating the conditions for non-consumption across vast swaths of the business landscape. Put simply, most businesses that could potentially benefit from the expertise of leading consulting firms cannot afford their services, nor do these services and the underlying collaboration model necessarily align with the processes or priorities of the client’s organization. The coronavirus pandemic has only exacerbated these disparities, begging the question of whether new consulting models may be on the horizon.  This week on The Disruptive Voice, we’re delighted to bring you a conversation with Erika J. Meldrim, Head of Business Development at Innosight, a strategy and innovation consulting firm founded by Clayton Christensen and Mark Johnson that focuses on helping organizations to design and create the future, rather than be disrupted by it. Hosted by Katie Zandbergen, they discuss how Innosight, looking inward and drawing on a strategy of dual transformation, is working on the development of a new initiative called Innosight Connect. This flexible engagement model is offered to clients across industries, enables an actionable understanding of Innosight’s intellectual property, embeds capabilities by teaching and upskilling teams, and emphasizes collaborative problem solving and co-creation.  This model also allows a wider breadth of organizations to take advantage of Innosight’s service offerings – different customers with different Jobs To Be Done than those served by the core Innosight offering. The conversation touches on a range of topics, including the discovery process that led to the genesis of Innosight Connect, features of the business model that differentiate it from other aspects of the Innosight portfolio, consulting industry trends, customer Jobs To Be Done, and Future-back thinking, to cite just a few examples.  Tune in for an interesting conversation focused on a great example of business model innovation theory in action!