Clayton M. Christensen

The Rigid Disk Drive Industry: A History of Commercial and Technological Turbulence

In its early years, the disk drive industry was led by a group of large-scale, integrated firms of the sort that Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., observed in his studies of several of the worlds largest industries. The purpose of this history is to explore why it was so difficult for the leading disk drive manufacturers to replicate their success when technology and the structure of markets changed. The most successful firms aggressively developed the new component technologies required to address their leading customers’ needs, but this attention caused leading drive makers to ignore a sequence of emerging market segments, where innovative disk drive technologies were deployed by new entrants. As the performance of these new-architecture products improved at a rapid pace, the new firms were eventually able to conquer established markets as well. As a consequence, most of the integrated firms that established the disk drive industry were driven from it, displaced by networks of tightly focused, less integrated independent companies.

Disruptive Innovation In Health Care Delivery: A Framework For Business-Model Innovation

Disruptive innovation has brought affordability and convenience to customers in a variety of industries. However, health care remains expensive and inaccessible to many because of the lack of business-model innovation. This paper explains the theory of disruptive innovation and describes how disruptive technologies must be matched with innovative business models. The authors present a framework for categorizing and developing business models in health care, followed by a discussion of some of the reasons why disruptive innovation in health care delivery has been slow.

The future of the microprocessor business

In a century in which technology left few aspects of life unchanged in some countries, the microprocessor may have been the most transformative of all. In three decades it has worked itself into our lives with a scope and depth that would have been impossible to imagine during its early development. In this paper, the authors argue that customization and speed-to-market will continue to drive the industry from the bottom up.

Maximizing the Returns from Research

OVERVIEW: Companies need to match their research activities to the industry situation. Moreover, they can only successfully commercialize a new technology if they control all of the activities with which that technology interacts. Attempting to do otherwise is likely to end in frustration. After a technology is “good enough” for the marketplace, the necessary locus of integration shifts backwards. In these circumstances, companies ought to focus their research activities on individual pieces that add value. Those companies that continue to integrate their research activities across the entire value chain face the possibility of research “leaking” to specialist companies. In short, companies should not employ a one-size-fits-all-forever strategy for capturing value across the life cycles of their technologies. Rather, the right strategy will depend on finding the decoupling point, for each technology, at each point in time.

Editorial Managing Innovation in Emerging Economies: An Introduction to the Special Issue

The 11 papers in this special issue focus on managing innovation in emerging economies. The papers cover a good spectrum of topics, methodology, industry as well as geographical location. Collectively they draw observations from Brazil, China, India, Philippines, South Africa, and Taiwan.

The New Economics of Semiconductor Manufacturing

This article deals with the Toyota Production System that has been applied to integrated chip making. Even more important, Toyotas approach to mass production has produced bountiful profits. These early results point to the new economics of semiconductor manufacturing and that this will have a profound and lasting effect on the industry and create new opportunities for growth.

The Strategic Management of Technological Innovation

This article presents a review of the book “The Strategic Management of Technological Innovation,” edited by Ray Loveridge and Martin Pitt.