The Innovation Show

Global poverty is one of the world’s most vexing problems. For decades, we’ve assumed smart, well-intentioned people will eventually be able to change the economic trajectory of poor countries. From education to healthcare, and infrastructure to eradicating corruption, too many solutions rely on trial and error. Today’s guest reveals a paradox at the heart of our approach to solving poverty. While...

Like an old machine emitting a new and troubling sound that even the best mechanics can’t diagnose, the world economy continues its halting recovery from the 2008 recession. Look at what’s happening in the United States: Even today, 60 months after the scorekeepers declared the recession over, its economy is still grinding along, producing low growth and disappointing job numbers.  One phenom...

As legendary Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt said, "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!" Many organisations focus on creating products for narrow demographic segments rather than satisfying needs when customers want to "hire" a product to do a job. We are joined by Bob Moesta, Master Innovator, Maker and Entrepreneur; Expert Investigator...

Today’s book is a book about progress.
Yes, it’s a book about innovation—and how to get better at it. But at its core, this book is about the struggles we all face to make progress in our lives.
If you’re like many entrepreneurs and managers, the word “progress” might not spring to mind when you’re trying to innovate. Instead, you obsess about creating the perfect product with just the right featu...

Our guest was the Harvard Business Review editor until 2011, when today's book changed her life. She graduated from Cornell University and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. In 2011 she was named by Ashoka as one of the world’s most influential and inspiring women. She is also an incredible author and has co-authored with the late Clayton Christensen. She is here today to discu...

Our guest was the Harvard Business Review editor until 2011, when today's book changed her life. She graduated from Cornell University and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. In 2011 she was named by Ashoka as one of the world’s most influential and inspiring women. She is also an incredible author and has co-authored with the late Clayton Christensen. She is here to discuss the...

The genesis of today’s book centred on a question posed years ago to “disruptive technologies” coauthor Clayton Christensen: where do disruptive business models come from? Christensen’s best-selling books, The Innovator’s Dilemma and The Innovator’s Solution, conveyed important insight into the characteristics of disruptive technologies, business models, and companies. Today’s book emerged from an...

More than a decade ago, Mark Johnson, SAP’s Henning Kagermann, and Clayton Christensen hashed out the principles of business model reinvention in the pages of the Harvard Business Review. Essentially, a business model can be broken down into four distinct elements: A value proposition 2. Resources  3. Processes, 4. A profit formula  This means in practice that the new and different must...

Clayton M. Christensen and Michael B. Horn’s “Disrupting Class” is an unsettling title for a book about the schooling process. The title conveys multiple meanings. The principal message is that disruption can usefully frame why schools have struggled to improve and how to solve these problems. We welcome back the author of “Disrupting Class, How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World...

Some essential lessons in "Seeing What’s Next" relate to disruptive innovations. Four critical lessons are: 1. Disruption is a process, not an event. 2. Disruption is a relative phenomenon. What is disruptive to one company may be sustaining to another company. 3. Different or radical technology does not equal disruptive. 4. Disruptive innovations are not limited to high-tech markets. Disruption c...

The Innovator’s Dilemma summarised a theory that explains how, under certain circumstances, the mechanism of profit-maximising resource allocation causes well-run companies to get killed.  The Innovator’s Solution, in contrast, summarises a set of theories that can guide managers who need to grow new businesses with predictable success—to become the disruptors rather than the disruptees—and ultima...

The paper I wanted to share today aims to provide a common language about the research process that helps management scholars spend less time defending the style of research they have chosen and build more effectively on each other’s work. I felt this series on Clayton Christensen’s work and theories would be incomplete without this episode. It is a great pleasure to welcome the co-author of that...

Our guest’s award-winning research introduces a new perspective on value creation and competition when industry boundaries break down in the wake of ecosystem disruption. His two books, The Wide Lens and Winning the Right Game, have been heralded as landmark contributions to strategy literature. Clayton Christensen described his work as “Path-breaking”, and Jim Collins has called him “On...

In 2003, media companies and newspapers were in free fall, when American newspapers earned only a tiny percentage of revenue from digital. The Deseret News and Deseret Digital Media were the envy of others, with more than 50% of the organisation’s combined net income coming from digital sources. All this was a little more than three years after a former Harvard Business School professor took over...

We covered the Innovator’s Dilemma with Matthew Christensen in the first part of this series, but we did not cover Chapter 7 of the Innovator’s Dilemma,that chapter Is entitled “Discovering New and Emerging Markets” It opens as follows: “Markets that do not exist cannot be analyzed: Suppliers and customers must discover them together. Not only are the market applications for disruptive technologie...

In part 2 of our series to honour the work, life and theories of Clayton Christensen, Joseph Bower unpacks that famous HBR article, "Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave" This article spawned the book, "The Innovator's Dilemma" Joe Bower s the father of "Resource Allocation theory" included in his 1970 groundbreaking book, Managing the Resource Allocation Process. He has been a leader in gen...

The logical, competent decisions of management that are critical to the success of their companies are also the reasons why they lose their positions of leadership.” How can executives simultaneously do what is right for the near-term health of their established businesses while focusing adequate resources on the disruptive technologies that ultimately could lead to their downfall? The Innovator's...

Today’s book takes a fresh perspective on what it takes for people to flourish in the workplace. Our guest suggests that when we focus on neurodiversity, we respect people’s deeper drives and motivations, and then companies will naturally achieve better results as a side effect. One thing we must keep in mind is that neurosignatures shouldn’t be thought of as static. Our neurosignatures change thr...

The story of language is the story of humanity; the new understanding of language that our guests outline in this book radically revises our conception of ourselves. In today’s book, our guests outline a revolutionary perspective that overhauls almost everything we thought we knew about language. We will hear how the game of charades reveals deep insights into how language works. We’ll hear how ou...

Senior leaders often want to know how they can build an environment to allow innovation to thrive. In order to do that, they first need to realise that business activities live on an uncertainty continuum - that we call the Explore-Exploit Continuum - and that creating new growth engines and managing existing business(es) are on opposite ends of this continuum. A better understanding of the Explor...

As a cognitive device, STORY is so woven into our language and thought process that it is inextricable. Since thought is at the heart of one’s life experience, it’s your stories—the ones you tell yourself habitually, for days, weeks, months, years, and even decades, that either move you closer to your goals and ideals or tragically, push them further away. Building upon his prior works and leaning...

It is a pleasure to welcome back the author of “Banks and Fintech on Platform Economies: Contextual and Conscious Banking “ Paolo Sironi, welcome to the show Evolving bank business models on outcome economies, resolving the tension between information and communication, which requires overcoming the fears of abandoning the shore of established operational models, and all the products and services...

Co-author of "Eat Sleep Innovate", Paul Cobban, shares the importance of reframing your competitive set and the concept of MOJO Meetings and Wreckoon. Singapore's DBS Bank has been voted the world’s best bank for five years in a row! It wasn’t always like that. Today’s guest remembered his first day at DBS in 2009: when he asked his taxi driver to take him to DBS, the driver said, “Ah, DBS—Damn Bl...

The work of Clayton Christensen changed my worldview and, ultimately, my life. I have been lining up all his co-authors to celebrate his life and share his theories. We have been interviewing each of these great thinkers over the last few months and into 2023. We will bring you each of those episodes in chronological order of his book releases. It includes Matt Christensen, Clay's son and CEO of R...

While the mechanistic work mindset has spurred huge growth and riches for many, it’s an approach that has masked a fundamental truth: Rather than a machine, organizations are living, dynamic systems that can’t be programmed. Instead, they thrive through relationships, adaptive structures, diverse networks of people, the spaces they occupy, the tools they use – and so, so much more. For our guests–...