The Innovator's Dilemma, with a New Foreword

CHAPTER FIVE Give Responsibility for Disruptive Technologies to Organizations Whose Customers Need Them

Most executives would like to believe that they’re in charge of their organizations, that they make the crucial decisions and that when they decide that something should be done everyone snaps to and executes. This chapter expands on the view already introduced: that in practice, it is a company’s customers who effectively control what it can and cannot do. As we have seen in the disk drive industry, companies were willing to bet enormous amounts on technologically risky projects when it was clear that their customers needed the resulting products. But they were unable to muster the wherewithal to execute much simpler disruptive projects ...