In The Capitalist's Dilemma, Clayton Christensen and Derek van Bever highlighted a persistent temptation for companies to increase profitability by driving down costs through "efficiency innovations." For many companies awash in capital, this increased profitability came at the expense of hundreds or thousands of jobs and often ignored the sources of long-term, sustainable growth: what Clay and Derek termed market-creating innovations. The trillion dollar exception to this rule is Amazon. Today, we are thrilled to bring you a conversation with Andy Jassy, HBS Class of 1997 and CEO of Amazon Web Services, including a wide-ranging discussion of Amazon's solutions to the Capitalist's Dilemma. Hosted by Derek van Bever, Andy tells the origin story of AWS, discusses the process of innovation at Amazon, and presents a graduate-level seminar on how to apply Clay's theories to drive innovation and growth. This is a not-to-be-missed conversation! 

Here at The Disruptive Voice, we've applied the theory of Jobs To Be Done to healthcare, education, poverty, and religion, among many other topics. This week we're considering the reasons that people hire and fire the arts. As COVID-19 continues to shape our communities and lives, we're excited to bring you this timely conversation with Pope Ward, Chief Research Officer at the Advisory Board for the Arts, to discuss the ways in which arts organizations can respond to this moment. The Advisory Board for the Arts (ABA) is the first global company to provide strategic advisory services to arts organizations worldwide, and Pope has conducted dozens of Jobs interviews during his tenure as CRO to better understand the reasons why people engage with the arts. Hosted by Katie Zandbergen, Community Manager at The Forum for Growth & Innovation, Pope discusses standout responses to COVID-19, for instance, at Tsuru Rising and the Geffen Playhouse; Jobs that have emerged or become increasingly significant during the pandemic, protests, and social unrest; and the prospects for arts organizations to meet the moment by cultivating a strategy for innovation centered on the changing needs of audiences.

On this week's episode of The Disruptive Voice, we're delighted to bring you a conversation with Erin Wetzel and Emily Snyder about their life-changing experiences working with Clayton Christensen at Harvard Business School.  Emily, currently Chief of Staff at Magnolia, served as Clay's Administrative Director for five years before attending Columbia Business School. Erin joined Clay's office in 2018, five years after meeting Clay and Emily in Oxford, and has worked as his Faculty Support Specialist at HBS while simultaneously pursuing a masters in social work at Boston University. The two reflect on their entry into Clay's world, share stories and reflections from their time with him, including his style as a manager, and discuss the applications of the theories taught in the Building and Sustaining a Successful Enterprise course to work and life. 

As the coronavirus continues to reshape the world, we turned to Scott D. Anthony, Managing Director at Innosight, to discuss his friendship and collaboration with Clayton Christensen; innovating during big event disruptions; the important concept of dual transformation; the role of Jobs To Be Done in strategic innovation; and his forthcoming book, "Eat, Sleep, Innovate: How to Make Creativity an Everyday Habit Inside Your Organization". Co-authored with Paul Cobban, Natalie Painchaud, and Andy Parker, the book draws on behavioral science and management theory to construct a playbook for leaders working to navigate transformational events, making innovation a natural and habitual act within both their teams and organizations. Since 2010, Scott has been based in Innosight's Singapore office, leading the firm’s expansion into the Asia-Pacific region, and along the way has authored numerous books and articles for such publications as the Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. Scott is hosted by Katie Zandbergen, Community Manager at The Forum for Growth & Innovation.  

This week on The Disruptive Voice we're delighted to bring you a timely conversation with Professor Luis Viceira and David Snider (MBA '13) on the state of the FinTech industry. Luis serves as the George E. Bates Professor in the Finance Unit and is also Senior Associate Dean for Executive Education at Harvard Business School, where he conducts research on long-term asset allocation, asset pricing, fixed income markets, and innovation and disruption in the money management industry, among many other topics of interest. He also serves as an advisor to Harness Wealth, a financial technology firm co-founded in 2018 by David Snider and Katie English (MBA '10) that connects individuals with a curated set of financial advisors for tax, estate and trust, and financial planning. Before founding Harness Wealth, David was a CFO/COO at Compass and an Executive-in-Residence at Bain Capital Ventures. In this episode, David and Luis are hosted by Derek van Bever, Director of The Forum for Growth & Innovation, to discuss the current state of the art in FinTech, the changing role of trust in enabling disruptive technology, and why disruption is rarer in FinTech than in most other industries. We're confident that you'll enjoy this wide ranging conversation!

When Nikhil Agarwal and Chris Abkarians were admitted to the Harvard Business School MBA Class of 2020, neither of them could have guessed that their efforts to negotiate on the price of their student loans would be transformed into a viable new venture. However, before they had even set foot on campus, they had saved themselves and around 700 of their peers an average of $15,000 each on their student loans. Realizing the potential of their efforts, Nikhil and Chris co-founded LeverEdge to further develop their model, using group buying power to negotiate better student loan rates with lenders. In this episode of The Disruptive Voice, Anibha Singh hosts Nikhil and Chris for a discussion on the structure of the student loan industry, how LeverEdge fits into that space, the flow of information throughout the lending and borrowing process, and the costs and benefits of using government or private loans to finance an education. We encourage our listeners to reach out to Chris and Nikhil if you'd like to be involved with LeverEdge or are looking for an exciting career opportunity!

Do you remember having cable TV? Many of us do not. Over the last twenty years, the media landscape has been transformed amidst waves of disruption, technological innovation, and changing patterns of media consumption. Today on The Disruptive Voice, we bring you a timely conversation with Shilpa Bisaria, Senior Director of Growth Strategy and Operations at WarnerMedia, discussing how she has used management theory to guide her efforts in the media industry. Before taking on her current role, Shilpa worked for several years at Innosight, a consulting firm co-founded by Clayton Christensen and Mark Johnson that focuses on helping organizations to design and create the future, rather than be disrupted by it. During that time, she met Anibha Singh, now a Research Associate at The Forum for Growth & Innovation and your host for this episode. Together they discuss recent trends in the media industry, how Warner Media is targeting non-consumption, and Shilpa's work on a new social agency called Launchpad, developed within Warner Media. Given the ever-expanding role of media technology in our lives, we trust you'll find this an important and inspiring conversation!

This week on The Disruptive Voice, we're delighted to introduce you to Euvin Naidoo and Efosa Ojomo, who join us for a conversation about innovation, prosperity, and development in Africa. Originally from KwaDukuza, South Africa, Euvin is a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, where he studies risk management, performance controls, governance, and agile execution. In doing so, he regularly draws on his work in leading banking and financial institutions in Africa, including McKinsey, Standard Bank, and BCG. He is joined by Efosa Ojomo, Global Prosperity Lead and Senior Research Fellow at the Christensen Institute. A 2015 HBS MBA who took BSSE with Clayton Christensen, Efosa also worked with Clay and Karen Dillon on what would be Clay's last book: The Prosperity Paradox. Euvin and Efosa are hosted by Erin Wetzel, Clay's Faculty Support Specialist at Harvard Business School, and together they reflect on the impact of Clay's thinking, how it applies in a pan-African context, and the importance of market-creating innovations.

Twenty years ago, Mark W. Johnson and Clayton Christensen co-founded Innosight, a consulting firm focused on helping organizations to design and create the future, rather than be disrupted by it. This week on The Disruptive Voice, we’re pleased to welcome Mark for some reflections on his work and friendship with Clay; on a process of longer-term management called future-back thinking, which he and co-author Josh Suskewicz explore in their newly-released book, Lead From The Future: How To Turn Visionary Thinking Into Breakthrough Growth; and on ways in which senior leaders can apply these methods in organizations that struggle to look beyond the 3-5 year growth horizon. Hosted by Katie Zandbergen, Mark also shares insights about the distinction between vision and strategy, the story of Apple’s transformation from a computer company to a lifestyle company, and how we can think about applying the lessons from Lead From The Future in our current moment of crisis.

This week on The Disruptive Voice, we're delighted to introduce you to Professor Rory McDonald, the Thai-Hi T. Lee Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.  Before his untimely passing, Clayton Christensen named Rory as the Course Head of Building and Sustaining a Successful Enterprise and also charged him with leading and transforming BSSE to fit the needs of its newest students.  In this episode, Rory discusses new cases and theories that have been added to BSSE, including "Parrot: Navigating the Nascent Drone Industry", "Marcus by Goldman Sachs", and a module note on purpose brands, to name just a few.  He is hosted by Anibha Singh, a Research Associate here at The Forum for Growth & Innovation who has worked extensively with Rory over the previous year.  Together, they also discuss how these changes to the course interface with Rory's latest research on pioneering nascent markets.  We hope you enjoy this timely and informative discussion!