The paper I wanted to share today aims to provide a common language about the research process that helps management scholars spend less time defending the style of research they have chosen and build more effectively on each other’s work. I felt this series on Clayton Christensen’s work and theories would be incomplete without this episode. It is a great pleasure to welcome the co-author of that paper and a person who has built on this work considerably, Paul Carlile. Papers mentioned in the episode are listed here: https://www.bu.edu/questrom/profile/paul-carlile/

Our guest’s award-winning research introduces a new perspective on value creation and competition when industry boundaries break down in the wake of ecosystem disruption. His two books, The Wide Lens and Winning the Right Game, have been heralded as landmark contributions to strategy literature. Clayton Christensen described his work as “Path-breaking”, and Jim Collins has called him “One of our most important strategic thinkers for the 21st century.” It is a pleasure to welcome Ron Adner.  Find Ron here: https://ronadner.com

  In 2003, media companies and newspapers were in free fall, when American newspapers earned only a tiny percentage of revenue from digital. The Deseret News and Deseret Digital Media were the envy of others, with more than 50 percent of the organization’s combined net income coming from digital sources. All this a little more than three years after a former Harvard Business School professor took over the company. How did he do it? He developed his strategy thanks to his work with Clayton Christensen and employed the research to recalibrate how Deseret is organised and does business. Today, he has recalibrated his life and reallocated his resources to causes other than the business world. More about that shortly. First and foremost, he is with us to pay tribute to his friend, share how his theories helped him perform a spectacular turnaround in the media industry and share insights from his book, “Dual Transformation, How to Reposition Today’s Business While Creating the Future.” It is a rare treat and absolute honour to spend time with the author of “Dual Transformation” with Scott D Anthony and Mark Johnson and “From Resource Allocation to Strategy” with our previous guest Joe Bower. Clark Gilbert, welcome to the show.

We covered the Innovator’s Dilemma with Matthew Christensen in the first part of this series, but we did not cover Chapter 7 of the Innovator’s Dilemma,that chapter Is entitled “Discovering New and Emerging Markets” It opens as follows: “Markets that do not exist cannot be analyzed: Suppliers and customers must discover them together. Not only are the market applications for disruptive technologies unknown at the time of their development, they are unknowable. The strategies and plans that managers formulate for confronting disruptive technological change, therefore, should be plans for learning and discovery rather than plans for execution. This is a crucial point to understand because managers who believe they know a market’s future will plan and invest very differently from those who recognize the uncertainties of a developing market.” You may know those to be the words of Clayton Christensen, but what you may not know is that this concept of discovery-driven growth stems from the work of a very special friend of the Innovation Show, it is an immense pleasure to welcome Rita McGrath. Topics Covered on this episode:  00:00:00 - Intro and Sponsor 00:02:28 Rita McGrath Welcome 00:04:15 Clayton Christensen Relationship 00:07:35 Discovery-Driven Planning 00:12:05 Client Example of Too Attached to Outcome 00:13:23 Redefining Failure: Failing Fast is Not Always Failing 00:14:04 Example of Varo Bank  00:18:51 KittyHawk Example 00:20:54 The Role of Luck 00:24:51 Honda SuperCub and NonConsumers 00:27:50 Jobs To Be Done and The McLean Hamburger 00:29:51 Origins of Discovery-Driven Planning 00:31:41 Most Mutations in Nature Fail, as do most ideas 00:32:47 Origins of Innovation Thinking From Schumpeter to Today 00:34:08 Discovery-Driven Planning Overview in a Nutshell 00:37:55 Disasters: EuroDisney 00:42:09 Disasters: PolaVision 00:43:15 Organisational Capabilities, Arenas and Kao 00:46:23 Selling an Idea to a CFO/Incumbent Gatekeeper  00:51:06 UPM Example: United Paper Mills Example 00:55:00 R.A.C.E. Find Rita here: https://www.ritamcgrath.com/ Find Valize here: https://www.valize.com/  

In part 2 of our series to honour the work, life and theories of Clayton Christensen, Joseph Bower unpacks that famous HBR article, "Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave" This article spawned the book, "The Innovator's Dilemma" Joe Bower s the father of "Resource Allocation theory" included in his 1970 groundbreaking book, Managing the Resource Allocation Process. He has been a leader in general management at Harvard Business School for over five decades where he is the Donald K. David Professor Emeritus. He was Clayton Christensen’s doctoral thesis adviser and worked with Clay to develop and stress-test his theories. Just some of the topics covered in this episode:  00:00:00 Intro 00:01:46 Managing Resource Allocation 00:02:57 Dissertation Supervisor for Clayton Christensen 00:04:11 Traits of Great Leaders 00:06:19 Resource Allocation 00:08:44 Group Decision Making 00:26:56 The Human Element of Change 00:46:46 Advice for Changemakers and Leaders 00:51:25 Getting People to Change Their Mind 00:56:29 Final Thoughts on Clayton Christensen  

Matthew Christensen, expert on management decisions and leadership in the face of disruptive technologies, discusses the innovator's dilemma and the challenge of balancing established businesses with disruptive technologies. Also explores the importance of family, teaching children independence, sustaining and disruptive innovations, creating solutions before identifying problems, and the importance of sustainability in innovation.

Today’s book takes a fresh perspective on what it takes for people to flourish in the workplace. Our guest suggests that when we focus on neurodiversity, we respect people’s deeper drives and motivations, and then companies will naturally achieve better results as a side effect. One thing we must keep in mind is that neurosignatures shouldn’t be thought of as static. Our neurosignatures change throughout the day. When I get out of bed in the morning, my testosterone neurosignature is very high. But by evening, it’s almost nonexistent. I don’t want to conquer my goals at eight at night; I want to watch Netflix and chill. We welcome back a great friend of the show, Friederike Fabritius, a multiple-time guest with her WSJ best seller: The Brain-Friendly Workplace. Find Friederike here: https://friederikefabritius.com

The story of language is the story of humanity; the new understanding of language that our guests outline in this book radically revises our conception of ourselves. In today’s book, our guests outline a revolutionary perspective that overhauls almost everything we thought we knew about language. We will hear how the game of charades reveals deep insights into how language works. We’ll hear how our brain can improvise linguistic ‘moves’ at an astonishingly rapid rate. We’ll hear how languages are in continual flux, how people without a common tongue can rapidly create a language from scratch, and why it’s likely that language has been independently reinvented countless times. We will realise how the creation of language is not only essential but also changes the nature of evolution. It’s a pleasure to welcome the authors of "The Language Game- How Improvisation Created Language and Changed the World", Nick Chater and Morten H. Christiansen. Find Nick here: https://www.wbs.ac.uk/about/person/nick-chater/ https://twitter.com/nickjchater Find Morten here: https://csl-lab.psych.cornell.edu https://twitter.com/mh_christiansen  

Senior leaders often want to know how they can build an environment to allow innovation to thrive. In order to do that, they first need to realise that business activities live on an uncertainty continuum - that we call the Explore-Exploit Continuum - and that creating new growth engines and managing existing business(es) are on opposite ends of this continuum. A better understanding of the Explore-Exploit Continuum will help executives and innovation teams put in place the right investment and management processes, the required skill set and culture to explore new business ideas as successfully as they exploit current businesses.

As a cognitive device, STORY is so woven into our language and thought process that it is inextricable. Since thought is at the heart of one’s life experience, it’s your stories—the ones you tell yourself habitually, for days, weeks, months, years, and even decades, that either move you closer to your goals and ideals or tragically, push them further away. Building upon his prior works and leaning upon advanced theories of thought and meta-cognition, Grunburg produces an epic finale and at the same time, introduces an innovative and simplified behaviour change model already impacting the coaching and behaviour change professions. Find Martin here: https://thehabitfactor.com