The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Brief Article - Book Review

The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth. By Clayton M. Christensen and Michael E. Raynor. Harvard Business School Press, 304 pages. $29.95.

In the mid-1990s, Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen, developed a theory about corporate survival he called "The Innovator's Dilemma." The landmark 1997 book by that name explored a relatively simple but confounding idea: that industry leaders spent so much time and effort mining (and perhaps dining) their best customers that they were often blindsided by disruptive innovations from smaller rivals or new technologies they might have disdained as too risky,

Now, writing with Deloitte Research Director Michael Raynor, Christensen has fashioned a sequel that takes this concept a step further: It asks successful companies to deliberately design disruptions, to be energized by them rather than crippled. Innovation, they write, can be "a predictable process that delivers sustainable...