Harvard Business Review Leadership Library: The Executive Collection (12 Books)

CHAPTER TEN

Managing Disruptive Technological Change: A Case Study

As we approach the end of this book, we should better understand why great companies can stumble. Incompetence, bureaucracy, arrogance, tired executive blood, poor planning, and short-term investment horizons obviously have played leading roles in toppling many companies. But we have learned here that even the best managers are subject to certain laws that make disruptive innovation difficult. It is when great managers haven’t understood or have attempted to fight these forces that their companies have stumbled.

This chapter uses the forces and principles described in earlier ...