IT Conversations: Clayton Christensen - Capturing the Upside

http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail135.html

Every company needs to grow, and innovation is the ticket to sustainable and profitable growth. What decisions can managers take to increase their probability of successfully building innovation-driven growth businesses? Many are convinced that it is impossible to predict with confidence whether an innovation will succeed, so they feel they need to place a number of bets with the hope that some will be winners. Others believe that the best way to create new growth businesses is to meticulously search for detailed quantitative data to identify opportunities and develop a rigorous plan to attack those opportunities. But many times conclusive data is only available after the game has already been won. Professor Clayton M. Christensen of the Harvard Business School has another way. He suggests using theory. A theory is a statement of what causes what and why. Whether managers know it or not, they are voracious consumers of theory. Every action a manager takes, every plan a manager makes is based on some belief of cause and effect.

Listened to Professor Christensen's talk the other day. He's an excellent speaker and has a fascinating insight on how innovation happens. I'm going to have to hunt down copies of his two books.