Well-Tailored IT

Develop a sophisticated, more strategically oriented information technology approach.

Building an Innovation Dynasty

Success requires going beyond winning once to developing deep capabilities that allow a company to repeatedly disarm disruptive threats and seize new growth opportunities. Borrowing a metaphor from the sports (or geopolitical) world, it requires creating an “Innovation Dynasty” that can, year after year, churn out successful growth businesses.

Chapter 10 of The Innovator’s Solution by Clayton M. Christensen and Michael E. Raynor (Harvard … [ Read more ]

Mark W. Johnson

Rather than think of white space as external — as some indistinct but desirable land outside your company’s walls — I suggest that it’s more productive to view it as an internal signpost — as a way to map your company’s ability to address new opportunities or threats. So by white space, I mean “market opportunities your company may wish — or need — to … [ Read more ]

A New Framework for Business Models

Your business model has to specify not just how your company intends to make money but also why a customer would want to give it any, says Mark W. Johnson.

Scott D. Anthony and Mark W. Johnson and Joe Sinfield

Broadly speaking, organic growth can come from natural expansion of the core business, moves into near-in adjacent markets, and the creation of entirely new growth businesses. Companies need to have a rough estimate of their ultimate top-line and bottom-line goals, and how much growth they can reasonably expect to get from each of those three categories.

Scott D. Anthony and Mark W. Johnson and Joe Sinfield

Companies have to treat different types of innovation opportunities differently. Companies routinely organize differently to solve fundamentally different problems, yet the area of growth is all too often lumped into one managerial process, governed by one set of metrics. An incremental improvement in an existing market has to be measured, monitored, and managed differently than a completely new strategy that might go into a … [ Read more ]

Scott D. Anthony and Mark W. Johnson and Joe Sinfield

When a company is heading in a new direction, senior managers need to be problem solvers, not just problem finders.

Clayton M. Christensen and Mark Johnson

The term “business model” often describes the profit formula used by the company to generate its income. However, we have seen fit to increase the scope of the term business model beyond profit model to include how the company delivers value to the customer and, subsequently, how the company organizes resources and processes to support both its profit model and customer value propositions. External interactions … [ Read more ]

Mark W. Johnson, Clayton M. Christensen, and Henning Kagermann

One way to generate a precise customer value proposition is to think about the four most common barriers keeping people from getting particular jobs done: insufficient wealth, access, skill, or time.

Disrupt And Prosper

CIOs at established companies can help identify and foster disruptive innovation to ensure future growth in existing and emerging markets.