10
The Ghosts of Bethlehem
Big Steel and the Shaping of an Industry
This story begins sometime in 2001. I don’t know the exact date, but at some indeterminate time this year, I first heard Clay Christensen tell a classic story about disruption in steel.
Clay would use a single slide to describe the history of the steel industry. Figure 10-1 is from one of the various presentations that sits on my hard drive. The format mirrors the disruptive line model. It had various market tiers (e.g., rebar, structural steel), showing the quality of steel demanded. Each line drawn for the market tier had two numbers associated with it. The number on the left showed gross margin for a particular tier. The number on the right (under the heading “% of tons”) ...
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