The Innovator's Dilemma: Strategies for Corporate Survival

This essay examines "The Innovator's Dilemma," a concept exploring why successful companies often fail when faced with disruptive technologies. It delves into how established firms prioritize existing customer needs, making it difficult to invest in smaller, initially less appealing innovations. The essay discusses how companies make decisions based on market position, the importance of maintaining growth rates, and the challenges of analyzing markets that do not yet exist. It provides examples of companies that failed to adapt to disruptive technologies, such as Blackberry and marketing agencies. The essay also explores why mid-level managers might disregard or kill disruptive technologies, and suggests strategies for companies to overcome these challenges, including creating separate organizations for innovation and making acquisitions. The essay concludes by considering how companies can develop new capabilities, either internally or through acquisitions, to navigate the innovator's dilemma successfully.

Running Head: THE INNOVATOR’S DILEMMA.
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Assignment Title: The Innovator’s Dilemma.

The Innovator’s Dilemma. 2
Corporations rely on Customers and investors for assets
For companies to endure they must satisfy their customers and investors fully. Large
companies, therefore, have devised ways of doing away with ideas which customers do not
want. This results to these large companies finding it hard to devote sufficient funds in small,
simpler and cheaper lower boundary opportunities that their customers don’t want at that
particular moment. they tend to wait till their customers need them and that is when they take
the action of providing them and by then it will be late, it will be too late i.e. it will have been
taken over by other companies (Christensen, 2013).
Companies make decisions according to where they are in the market.
In order for the well established companies to uphold their profits and returns and make
inside openings for their workers, there is a necessity for prosperous companies to rise. It is
not essential for them to raise their development speed, but they should uphold that speed. In
the process of rising, there is a need for an increase in revenue just to uphold the development
speed. As a result of that, it becomes hard for them to get into a small and growing market
which has small revenues but are intended to improve in future (König, Kammerlander &
Enders, 2013).
To maintain their development rates, they must emphasize on large markets. In the process of
focusing on the larger market in order to maintain their rate of growth, large companies lose
on some good opportunities which would have helped them remain competitive in the market
in the future.
You cannot analyze markets that are not in existence
Complete market study, exploration and proper scheduling charted by implementation in
accordance with the set strategies are the characteristics of noble administration. For
companies who make their speculation decisions based on a quantified study of the market
size, and revenues, they get paralyzed before penetrating the market when they encounter
disruptive technologies because the market demand is not yet in existence (Christensen,
2013).
The supply of technology may not be proportional to its market demand.
Disruptive technology is initially intended to be used in small markets but they finally
develop into a competitive product in the top markets. This is as a result of industrial
development rate exceeding the speed of enhancement in which top consumers of a product
want. This results in products that are currently on top exceeding the performance that top
markets demand while the disrupting technologies that perform poorly will eventually rise to
compete directly in future. Once competing products are satisfying customers adequately they
will find other criteria for choosing which product they will go for. The criteria they use
normally tends to move towards price and suitability (Christenson, 1997).
Businesses that have up scaled themselves out of business and how they could have evaded
this.
Blackberry phones lost to iPhones. The iPhone came up with touch screens. Instead of
turning to disruptive innovation, blackberry thought that the keyboard phone would continue
to be attractive to business people and experts and therefore they got phased out of the
market.
Marketing and advertising agencies lost to the digital marketing. Nowadays marketing and
advertising are done through digital platforms for example through the use of YouTube ads.

The Innovator’s Dilemma. 3
The two mentioned above would have avoided being phased out of the market by simply
adopting the disruptive technology. The Blackberry, for example, should have embraced the
touch screens slowly while still manufacturing their keyboard phones but slowly getting rid
of them.
Disruptive technology is whereby a product or service which initially had a low customer
base or demand rises to compete and even outdo other services or products that initially had
large customer demand and was on top in the market.
Online learning with the advancement in technology, most schools and universities are
moving towards online learning. Nowadays students get their course work materials from
their tutors online. That way they carry out their assignments and tests far from school i.e.
distant learning and at the end of time, they acquire their awards (Phills, Deiglmeier & Miller,
2008).
The traditional physical buildings that are resistant to change and do not want to include
distance learning into their systems and curriculum will soon be left out regardless of their
reputation in the industry.
Mobile banking technologies. With the technology taking over the world fast, one can carry
out their transactions from their mobile phone which they would otherwise have gone to the
bank.
This way the traditional banking methods have been jeopardized with a possibility of banks
retrenching most of its staffs and employees.
Reasons why midlevel employees disregard or kill disruptive technologies
According to Clayton Christensen, companies tend to think that the outcome of innovation is
hard to predict and therefore middle level managers are urged to put more effort in creating
innovative ideas with disruptive technologies for such processes. Such ideas from middle
level management must be approved by high level management. Unfortunately, the
management never develops new products with these technologies reason being uncertain of
the products to appear in the market from a corporate perspective (Henderson, 2006).
Planning a market strategy, in this case, is vital otherwise a lot of money will be lost. Middle
level managers submit their proposals to the senior management with data analysis from their
loyal customers for their products. They feel unhappy because senior management may not
approve their proposals for their projects hence their reputation may be ruined. I order for
them to maintain their status; they need to innovate more new ideas to demeanor excellent
results so as to satisfy the senior management. As the market expands in future its demand is
not so large and as such managers would like to kill or ignore disruptive technologies because
of safeguarding by themselves (Christensen, 2013).
Christensen elaborates that Business growth is required to be maintained by senior executives
in mainstream markets. In addition, they need to guarantee how to allocate assets, carry out
the procedures, and set the standards in the correct conditions. Since they need to organize all
actions and choices that the workers will be given orders to do the work as allocated by them.
In most organizations, employees tend to become too contented with their daily routine tasks.
They are not ready or willing to support disruptive technologies because they find it not
worth to take threats outside their daily duties. They are not willing to take risks to identify
opportunities outside their daily responsibilities (König, Kammerlander & Enders, 2013).

The Innovator’s Dilemma. 4
Well managed companies should change these practices. The proposals presented by the
employees should be watched closely and keenly. Also, decisions should not only be based
on loyal customers but rather on potential customers and above all, an organization should be
in a position to take risks.
Executives should start another distinct organization from the main organization which will
undertake the disruptive technologies and innovations. Christensen reasoned that in order for
the companies’ management to divert their interest to small markets, the company’s size
should be proportional to the size of the suitable opportunity.
Creating abilities through acquisitions
Administrators believe that obtaining another firm instead of setting up and an independent
firm is preferable because it makes sense financially and competitively. Depending on the
reason for the acquirer or the acquire d’s success, then will the managers make a decision on
whether to let the business run independently and for the original business to supply
resources to them.
Creating new capabilities internally.
This can involve hiring personnel with new skills, increasing capital, changing product lines
etc. often, these are done into existing organizational processes and information can be
obtained. Unfortunately, procedures are quite difficult to modify. Structural limits are often
drawn to ease the action of current procedures. Those limits can hinder the formation of new
procedures that cut through those limits. When new encounters need individuals interrelate
otherwise than they are used to addressing dissimilar encounters with diverse judgments than
traditionally required, executives need to tug the pertinent personnel out of the current
organization and draw a new limit around a new group. New side limits allow new patterns of
working together that eventually can unite as new procedures for transforming inputs into
outputs (Christensen, 2013).
Depending on the current position of the organization, then should the decision on whether to
redesign themselves or have a distinct organizational structure. If the organization in question
is small, then redesigning it would be better although changing its process and procedures is
not as easy as mentioned. If the organization in question is large, then I would advocate for
them to have distinct organizational structures. This way, they will be able to cater for their
small customer base and obtain their desired returns.

The Innovator’s Dilemma. 5
References
Christensen, C. (2013). The innovator's dilemma: when new technologies cause great firms
to fail. Harvard Business Review Press.
O’Reilly III, C. A., & Tushman, M. L. (2008). Ambidexterity as a dynamic capability:
Resolving the innovator's dilemma. Research in organizational behavior, 28, 185-
206.
Henderson, R. (2006). The innovator's dilemma as a problem of organizational
competence. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 23(1), 5-11.
Lynn, L. H. (1999). The innovator's dilemma: when new technologies cause great firms to
fail.
Christenson, C. (1997). The innovator’s dilemma. Harvard Business School Press,
Cambridge, Mass.
Christensen, C. M., & Christensen, C. M. (2003). The innovator's dilemma: The
revolutionary book that will change the way you do business (p. 320). New York, NY:
HarperBusiness Essentials.
Phills, J. A., Deiglmeier, K., & Miller, D. T. (2008). Rediscovering social
innovation. Stanford Social Innovation Review, 6(4), 34-43.
König, A., Kammerlander, N., & Enders, A. (2013). The family innovator's dilemma: How
family influence affects the adoption of discontinuous technologies by incumbent
firms. Academy of Management Review, 38(3), 418-441.