Do Read: The Innovator's Dilemma

"Sharp, cogent, and provocative, The Innovator's Dilemma is one of the most talked-about books of our time -- and one no savvy manager or entrepreneur should be without."

- quote from the back cover of the book -

Mmmmm... obviously, there is in existence, this cohort of 'savvy managers' who have been buzzing excited about this book for quite some time! Why this news has never reached my world before, I do not know; but I can no longer sit here in my ignorant, dark world, now that the back cover of the book told me that I am not a 'savvy manager' if I do not read this book . (What? Don't you always follow what the back cover of a book says?)

This book arrived at my door in a box with a dozen other business books in a shipment from Amazon.com. My company has a certain amount of annual budget (not much) for individuals to order 'self development' materials each year, and I usually end up choosing books to order from Amazon.com by skimming through the recommended reading lists of influential business publications. It's quite sad, really. After years of having to be very conscious about how I spent the little free time I have, best seller lists have become the core of my reading selection strategy -- and everyone knows that real gems rarely find their way onto these lists. (For example, Paolo Coelho's 'The Alchemist' has been around for many years, but in U.S., it appeared on best seller lists all of a sudden just recently. Why?)

From this stash (which, by the way, have mostly gone straight from the box to the bookshelf to join the others gathering dust in a special shelf dedicated to thick business books that I have purchased over the years, but never read), I started with this book because, apart from the provocative challenge from the back cover of the book (yes, I cannot let it go!), this book also happened to be at the lowest end of the scale in terms of number of pages: 286. (Some others that I ordered turned out to be some seriously hefty tomes, most with well over a thousand pages!)

The main thesis of the book is simple:

1. An organization's capabilities comprise resources, processes and values
2. An organization's capabilities are highly tuned to support the core competency of a company, and they are driven by upward vision to expand into higher value markets
3. Unfortunately, how an organization is tuned for success with an established technology (e.g. mainframe computers) is the very factor that undermines its success when faced with disruptive technology (e.g. introduction of PCs), because resources (e.g. relevent skills in a particular technology in a company) is easy to change; processes and values are not

Of course, what makes a business book good is not the main ideas that can be summarized into three bullet points, but the compelling ways in which these ideas are presented and supported through rich and relevent examples -- and this book does just that. Now, the beginning is slightly rough, as the author opens up with an account of what happened in the hard disk industry between 1970-1990's (yeah... when was the last time you got excited talking about the progress of HD technology during a cocktail party?) but after the first two chapters, even for a relatively unsavvy business book reader such as myself, this book began to read very smoothly -- the flow of arguments and introduction of ideas that build upon previously established thesis are logically solid in a very satisfying way. There is a chapter of summary close to the end of the book, if you're the type who'd relied on Cliff Notes to get you through high school, but then again, I'll bet you haven't gotten much from the books you've (supposedly) read.

I'm not sure if I'm a 'savvy manager' yet, but I sure do feel much more astute about being able to explain why companies that were the Wall Street darlings and considered esteemed leaders, all of a sudden, stumble and crash. Read it!