We Lost a Great Groundbreaker: Clayton Christensen

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The guru of 'disruptive innovation' – Clayton Christensen – died at 67 on January 23, 2020.  We lost another great groundbreaker.  We were a huge fan of Professor Christensen, read all his books, and found him super intelligent, credible and practical.  Here's one of his insightful comments as he approached his own death:

“I know I’ve had substantial impact,” he wrote. “But as I’ve confronted this disease [complications of leukemia], it’s been interesting to see how unimportant that impact is on me now. I’ve concluded that the metric by which God will assess my life isn’t dollars but the individual people whose lives I’ve touched.
“Don’t worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved,” he continued; “worry about the individuals you have helped become better people.”  

We will miss Professor Christensen.  He will leave a legacy of hope, love and giving to others.  May he RIP.  Read The New York Times obituary.

Added 1/29/20 – worth a long read.

Disruptive Innovation in the Cargo Space

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Cargo shipments are coming into the Internet age and promise to reshape the transportation industry.  Find out how in the following article I authored for the About.com Import and Export site.

Shipping Global Cargo in the Internet Age

Looking for Disruptive Ideas? Try the Developing World

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Where will the next game changing idea take place?

We Americans may think of poorer nations as hotbeds of war and disease, a place to send our charity checks. But emerging economies are actually an invaluable breeding ground for innovations that could change lives in the U.S.

Think along the lines of what is called "reverse innovation" or a Lab For the World.

Discover more here.

Disruptive Coursera: Helping the World Access Education

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Two Stanford computer science professors -- Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng -- are offering higher-level online education courses for FREE at Coursera.  Yes, you read that right.

What is Coursera?

We are a social entrepreneurship company that partners with the top universities (refer to illustration) in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free. We envision a future where the top universities are educating not only thousands of students, but millions. Our technology enables the best professors to teach tens or hundreds of thousands of students.

Through this, we hope to give everyone access to the world-class education that has so far been available only to a select few. We want to empower people with education that will improve their lives, the lives of their families, and the communities they live in.

Wake-up world.  Learning just got a whole heck of a lot easier.  Join 1,136,787+ Courserians here.  By the time you visit the site, notice the growth in Courserians.

Note:  I've already signed up for a course starting January 2013. 

Invent the Future Through Innovation

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Disruptive innovators are everywhere. Are you one of them?

It takes technology to spread good ideas and make innovating easy. For ideas on how to get started, take a look at my latest contribution over at the American Express OPEN Forum, "Make a Date to Innovate."

If you want to be a fast innovator, don’t wait for it to happen, make it happen by making a date with innovation. That way, you can drive growth within your organization and continue inventing the future.

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Get a Feel For the Overseas Market

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If you have the time and the funds, nothing beats a visit to a country you are about to do business in to fully understand and appreciate how the people live day-to-day. Even Pepsi CEO, Indra Nooyi, realizes this:

The visit, one sweltering morning last week, was part of a 10-day "immersion" tour of China for Ms. Nooyi, who is seeking to strengthen the Purchase, N.Y., company's business in emerging markets. "I wanted to look at how people live, how they eat, what the growth possibilities are," she said in an interview Tuesday in Beijing. What she has seen has persuaded her that PepsiCo's approach to the Chinese market "is good, but not good enough. The opportunities are so much bigger." The company's "model for China has to be vastly different."

Read the entire article: "Pepsi CEO Tours China To Get a Feel for Market."
And one of the final points made in the article by Ms. Nooyi is right in line with our Top 10 Global Trends For Small Businesses For 2009 report published January 21st (refer to No. 1: "Disruptive innovation will be both the coolest and hottest new growth strategy in 2009 because it will transcend all boundaries and transform businesses" -- quote by Laurel Delaney) is this:

Ms. Nooyi challenged her China team to come up with ideas for products that cater to China's large older population. She also called for more in-depth research into women who, in China, are likely juggling work and motherhood and making the key day-to-day consumption decisions for households. She says she's calling on her executives to think "differently and disruptively," encouraging them to look beyond the company's traditional businesses in China.

Are you thinking differently and causing a little innovative disruption at your company?

Innovation Will Transcend All Boundaries

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We need to innovate our way to a new business model, at least that's what The New York Times, Sunday, February 1, 2009 article, "Disruptive Innovation, Applied to Health Care," states regarding health care.

Using innovation management models previously applied to other industries, Clayton M. Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor, argues in “The Innovator’s Prescription” that the concepts behind “disruptive innovation” can reinvent health care. The term “disruptive innovation,” which he introduced in 2003, refers to an unexpected new offering that through price or quality improvements turns a market on its head.

Disruptive innovators in health care aim to shape a new system that provides a continuum of care focused on each individual patient’s needs, instead of focusing on crises. Mr. Christensen and his co-authors argue that by putting the financial interests of hospitals and doctors at the center, the current system gives routine illnesses with proven therapies the same intensive and costly specialized care that more complicated cases require.

This falls right in line with our Trend No. 1 in Top 10 Global Trends for Small Businesses for 2009 (published January 21, 2009):

1. Disruptive innovation will be both the coolest and hottest new growth strategy in 2009 because it will transcend all boundaries and transform businesses.

Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor who focuses on innovation, discusses this very same topic in “How Hard Times Can Drive Innovation.” Also, a hip report by Trendwatching covers half a dozen consumer trends for 2009 and supports Christensen’s, and our theory, with prediction No. 6: Happy Ending. It states:

“At the same time, this is a great moment to innovate: shrinking budgets and diminishing revenues from existing offerings normally bring out the best and most creative in business professionals.”

Economist Joseph Schumpeter popularized a similar concept called “creative destruction” in 1942 in his book, “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy,” that describes the process of transformation that accompanies radical innovation. Look for more of this type of disruptive innovation in 2009.