MI376: Why Do Great Companies Fail? The Innovator’s Dilemma w/ Shawn O’Malley

In today’s episode, Shawn O’Malley (@shawn_OMalley_) discusses why great companies fail, as outlined by Clayton Christensen in his timeless book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, which was first published in 1997. The Economist actually named it one of the six most important business books ever written.

Christensen was an academic and business consultant who wrote a number of compelling books, but the Innovator’s Dilemma is by far his best-known work. Christensen worked at Harvard Business School for a decade before founding a consulting firm in 2000 and a venture capital firm focused on investing in Southeast Asia in 2005. 

In this episode, you’ll learn how disruptive innovations shift the status quo, the difference between disruptive and sustaining innovations, why companies can seemingly do everything right and still lose out to new competition, how following logical incentives can actually lead management to disregard threats from disruptive technology, why disruptive technologies tend to emerge on the fringes of established customer demographics, and what companies can do to prepare themselves for the inevitable rise of disruptive technologies, plus so much more!

Prefer to watch? Click here to watch this episode on YouTube.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN

00:00 - Intro

02:11 - What is a disruptive innovation, and how it differs from sustaining innovations.

02:52 - How the “paradox” of innovation impacts industry leaders.

05:11 - Why even the best of the best companies aren’t immune to disruptive innovation.

08:03 - How to think about disruptive technologies from the vantage point of a value investor.

08:55 - How Tesla disrupted the automotive industry.

13:15 - Why the fast-paced hard-drive industry is such a good case study on innovation.

21:10 - How value networks shape biases and outcomes in companies.

31:28 - What industry leaders can do to manage disruptive innovation.

36:20 - How Honda stumbled into disruptive innovation in the U.S. market.

*Disclaimer: Slight timestamp discrepancies may occur due to podcast platform differences.

BOOKS AND RESOURCES

• Join the exclusive TIP Mastermind Community to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Kyle and the other community members.
• Sign up for TIP’s free newsletter, We Study Markets.
• The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen.
• Clayton Christensen’s website.
• Executive Summary of the book.
• Clayton Christensen’s Essential Articles, from the Harvard Business Review.
• Check out the books mentioned in the podcast here.
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