The Innovator's Guide to Growth: Putting Disruptive Innovation to Work

CHAPTER 1

Precursors to Innovation

ANY EXECUTIVE KNOWS INTUITIVELY how difficult it is to master the forces of innovation. Large sample surveys support these intuitive conclusions. Most ideas never gain traction. Companies that achieve greatness topple. Large companies that survive tend to underperform relative to the market.¹ Conglomerates that seek to diversify to deliver better returns tend to be worth less than the sum of their parts.

The central argument of this book is that there are in fact practical ways to buck these trends. Companies that act appropriately can follow a different approach that allows them to create growth repeatedly.

The natural tendency for companies seeking to implement the ideas in this book is either to launch ...