One of the top 5 business books I've read. Explained a lot of things I noticed about creating and growing software products!

Blindly copying the best practices of successful companies without the guidance of circumstance-contingent theory is akin to fabricating feathered wings and flapping hard.

Patient for growth impatient for profit.

Initially, I read this book out of boredom, but it was 99% worth it. Not only did I gather more intell on what it takes to run a successful business but I also learned how to create success universally apart from business. Also, the lessons taught are ones that use examples and real people to motivate and inspire, which I took appreciation towards on a personal level.

For a Harvard Business book, this one isn't bad; makes some interesting points, and has a more coherent feel to it than many business books, especially those in the HBS Press which seem to have a fairly strong editorial style.

Down side: makes the usual promises and doesn't really deliver on several, and makes quite a few contradictions (see style note above).

Overall, worth a read, but I don't know why all these books seem to feel like they're pimping some other book, report or consultancy.

Christensen's completely worthy follow up to "The Innovator's Dilemma" which introduced a remarkable theory on technological innovation with sustaining & disruptive technologies. You can see my review of that book here:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

It's not a requirement to have read "The Innovator's Dilemma" before reading "The Innovator's Solution" but you will definitely want to after reading this one. Whereas "Dilemma" introduces the theory, "Solution" spells out how to evaluate your own innovation ideas in light of the relevant market context and your organization's capacity to execute on delivering innovation to that market.

Lot's of direct and supported assertions that might result in answers you don't want to hear (almost no organizations are setup to innovate successfully, especially (counter intuitively) ones that reached their market position by being innovative in the past). But "Solution" provides several paths forward once you've done the proper self-awareness checks so you can align as many things as possible in your favor.

Christensen's theories and tactics were put forward before a lot of the current industry leaders today reached the heights of their position in the marketplace. The theory from "Dilemma" consistently rings true when you evaluate the history of the winners and losers. The strategy and tactics in "Solution" are equally as prescient and, I suspect, quite timeless.

So, I ended up reading the Innovator's Solution before the Innovator's Dilemma because of Amazon shipping. So it may have hurt me to read the books a little out of order, but I will know when I dive into the Innovator's Dilemma later this month. The Innovator's Solution is a great book on looking for places of disruption, where you can find areas for your business to grow. The book is really well researched and also if you follow the footnotes will lead you to many new HBR articles and other business books which you may find interesting. The concepts and charts do a great job of pointing out how to lead an organization into growth.

The book is great at looking at a business and seeing opportunities to disrupt them through finding lower cost solutions and then leveraging your way up. The missed part of the book is looking at an emerging ecosystem and seeing how those disruptions require innovation. I was hoping that it would cover a little more about that type of disruption. So while a little disappointed in that missing content, the rest of the book is worth the read.

With a book that is as well researched as the Innovator's Solution, there were many key ideas to look into. I work for a Fortune 500 company as a Senior Manager and can see how big companies flee from disruption. This will be something that we will be looking for inside of our organization. We may still flee, but we won't feel good about it... Also, there are some markets where big players can disrupt, knowing that they have resources behind them. I am looking forward to training the team on this book and putting its concepts to good use.

Most management books that I have read. Go through basic concepts in the first 50 pages and then repeat the concepts over and over again until the end. This is not at all what The Innovator's Solution does. It is much more than just 50 good pages and then 250 pages of filling to hit a page number goal. The book is great all the way until the end. I would recommend you to read it if you are looking for new ideas of where to find growth through disruptive innovation.

Glenn recommended this to me over dinner before Christmas as the $20 version of one of his favorite classes/professors at HBS. Imagine my delight when I discovered it was available on the Kindle (after getting a Kindle for Christmas this year one of the hardest things initially was deciding what to read on it, since I have a stack of physical books I want to read and I didn't want to repurchase any of those). The book is all about the business of innovation, and is rife with historical examples and graphs that make it easy to understand. It is also a delightfully practical book, and while I can't make use of most it right now (I don't have a company to run or a team to manage), it's nice to read a book that is intended to be useful in addition to informative.

For anyone interested in the business of innovation, I highly recommend this. It is especially relevant in Silicon Valley and the high tech world, and many of the book's examples are drawn from there. It may have been more appropriate to start with The Innovator's Dilemma, but I didn't feel like I was starting in the middle by jumping straight to the Solution.

[Audiobook] Came recommended by a good friend and I started without realizing that it's the second book in a series. The book is solid and offers good examples about the business world, a world still rather foreign to me. While the business examples are somewhat dated (Palm Pilot, Blackberry, etc), you get the added benefit of seeing how everything plays out with hindsight, confirming many and disproving a few of the author's predictions.

I would recommend for anyone in the business world, though I think you'd be better served reading the first book (The Innovator's Dilemma) prior to moving on. However, I never felt at a loss reading The Innovator's Solution as it covers different, parallel topics to Dilemma.

Interesting concepts but a bit slow sometimes. The key take-away, develop a methodology to engage your company in a continuous process of disruptive-business seeking. Do it before it’s too late.

This author is exceptionaly great.
I love it.

A lot of good interesting ideas and well founded research. Just a bit over my head

The Innovator's Solution (2003) is Christensen's follow up to his landmark book, the Innovator's Dilemma (1997), which presented to the masses his (now) classic theory of disruptive innovation. In Solution, Christensen gives a good overview of what the dilemma actually is, so it didn't seem necessary to have read Dilemma to understand Solution.

Overall, I thought this book was great. It is dense enough to really build the theory properly and give you pragmatic information to go and try in your own business. But it wasn't so dense that you get bored or confused. From Dilemma, you get the concept of innovative disruptions. Small companies come in from the low-end market, competing on something like price or speed, move up market, and disrupt the bigger incumbents. Or, adjacent markets (non-consumers) that seem unrelated to the incumbents might actually foster growth for a disruptor that can, when big enough, start expanding rapidly and syphon away market share.

The Solution? Basically, create an innovation engine within your organization, ideally as small startup-like business units that can compete with these forces, but remain largely insulated from the parent organization's policies and values. The typical large enterprise may demand growth first and allow for profits later. Christensen says that to compete with the disruptors, these small units must be patient for growth, and impatient for profits. The theory proposes that innovations which build on top of the organization's existing business model are sustaining in nature, never disruptive. The novel business models used by these side units allow for competing with fringe market forces, and are the best way for playing in disruptive spaces.

The two main critiques I would give Solution are:
1. It is dated. All of the examples of what disruptive innovations look like, and how companies have generated new growth by innovation, are from the last century. It makes it a little harder to see the application of the theory in a far more digital/high-tech world than the one he describes, but not impossible. In 2015, Christensen wrote an HBR article on disruptive innovation, clarifying common misconceptions and bringing up more modern examples like Uber and the iPhone.
(https://hbr.org/2015/12/what-is-disru...)

2. Christensen's theory of disruptive innovation has been contested by some. The article mentioned above is actually Christensen's response to some of those dissenters. The general idea is basically that the theory seems to be more narrow in scope than most people tend to think. That didn't bother Christensen too much as that is in line with his original meaning, although he did seem to shift some focus away from products or services as being potential disruptions, to new business models being the impetus for disruption.