The most frightening thing about disruptive innovation-the phenomenon documented in Clayton Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma, in which market-leading companies in industry after industry have missed game-changing transformations-is that the mistakes are not the result of "bad" management. Instead, as Alan Murray has noted in The Wall Street Journal, the disasters have occurred because managers were following the dictates of "good" management. They studied their customers. They carefully researched the market and new technologies. They meticulously cultivated innovation. They stringently evaluated new development and weighed the cost of new investment against potential gains. And in the process, they missed disruptive innovations that opened up new customers and markets for alternative blockbuster products.
How can CEOs enable their firms to evolve beyond "good" traditional management and make them as adept at handling disruptive innovation as they have been at implementing disciplined execution? How can innovation become an organization-wide capability, a part of the firm's DNA?
