From Incremental to Exponential

SEVEN

The Eight Deadly Sins That Disable Change Efforts

CHAPTER SUMMARY: In this chapter, we cover eight common attitudes, approaches, and errors that can negate innovation efforts, using a wide range of real-world examples of how these sins can harm a business and even drive it into insolvency.

In their excellent book Lead and Disrupt,¹ Stanford University’s Charles O’Reilly and Harvard’s Mike Tushman compellingly present a means for companies to avoid the Innovator’s Dilemma; they also analyze how a handful of companies, including Amazon and IBM, have managed to successfully pivot to new opportunities without concurrently sacrificing their old businesses. In the case of Amazon, for example, the company has disrupted itself with innovation ...