HBR's 10 Must Reads for Executives 8-Volume Collection

Surviving Disruption

by Maxwell Wessel and Clayton M. Christensen

DISRUPTIVE INNOVATIONS ARE LIKE MISSILES launched at your business. For 20 years we’ve described missile after missile that took aim and annihilated its target: Napster, Amazon, and the Apple Store devastated Tower Records and Musicland; tiny, underpowered personal computers grew to replace minicomputers and mainframes; digital photography made film practically obsolete.

And all along we’ve prescribed a single response to ensure that when the dust settles, you’ll still have a viable business: Develop a disruption of your own before it’s too late to reap the rewards of participation in new, high-growth markets—as Procter & Gamble did with Swiffer, Dow Corning with Xiameter, and ...