New Releases by Clayton M. Christensen

A groundbreaking prescription for health care reform--from a legendaryleader in innovation . . . Our health care system is in critical condition. Each year, fewer Americans can afford it, fewer businesses can provide it, and fewer government programs can promise it for future generations. We need a cure, and we need it now. Harvard Business School’s Clayton M. Christensen—whose bestselling The Innovator’s Dilemma revolutionized the business world—presents The Innovator’s Prescription, a comprehensive analysis of the strategies that will improvehealth care and make it affordable. Christensen applies the principles of disruptive innovation to the broken health care system with two pioneers in the field—Dr. Jerome Grossman and Dr. Jason Hwang. Together, they examine arange of symptoms and offer proven solutions. YOU’LL DISCOVER HOW “Precision medicine” reduces costs and makes good on the promise of personalized care Disruptive business models improve quality, accessibility, and affordability by changing the way hospitals and doctors work Patient networks enable better treatment of chronic diseases Employers can change the roles they play in health care to compete effectively in the era of globalization Insurance and regulatory reforms stimulate disruption in health care

Selected as one of the "Best Books on Innovation, 2008" by BusinessWeek magazine Named the "Best Human-Capital Book of 2008" by Strategy + Business magazine A crash course in the business of learning-from the bestselling author of The Innovator''s Dilemma and The Innovator''s Solution... "Provocatively titled, Disrupting Class is just what America''s K-12 education system needs--a well thought-through proposal for using technology to better serve students and bring our schools into the 21st Century. Unlike so many education ''reforms,'' this is not small-bore stuff. For that reason alone, it''s likely to be resisted by defenders of the status quo, even though it''s necessary and right for our kids. We owe it to them to make sure this book isn''t merely a terrific read; it must become a blueprint for educational transformation." --Joel Klein, Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education “A brilliant teacher, Christensen brings clarity to a muddled and chaotic world of education.” --Jim Collins, bestselling author of Good to Great According to recent studies in neuroscience, the way we learn doesn''t always match up with the way we are taught. If we hope to stay competitive-academically, economically, and technologically-we need to rethink our understanding of intelligence, reevaluate our educational system, and reinvigorate our commitment to learning. In other words, we need “disruptive innovation.” Now, in his long-awaited new book, Clayton M. Christensen and coauthors Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson take one of the most important issues of our time-education-and apply Christensen''s now-famous theories of “disruptive” change using a wide range of real-life examples. Whether you''re a school administrator, government official, business leader, parent, teacher, or entrepreneur, you''ll discover surprising new ideas, outside-the-box strategies, and straight-A success stories. You''ll learn how Customized learning will help many more students succeed in school Student-centric classrooms will increase the demand for new technology Computers must be disruptively deployed to every student Disruptive innovation can circumvent roadblocks that have prevented other attempts at school reform We can compete in the global classroom-and get ahead in the global market Filled with fascinating case studies, scientific findings, and unprecedented insights on how innovation must be managed, Disrupting Class will open your eyes to new possibilities, unlock hidden potential, and get you to think differently. Professor Christensen and his coauthors provide a bold new lesson in innovation that will help you make the grade for years to come. The future is now. Class is in session.

When a disruptive innovation is launched, it changes the entire industry and every firm operating within in This book argues that it is possible to predict which companies will win and which will lose in a specific situation—and provides a practical framework for doing so. Most books on innovation—including Christensen’s previous two books—approached innovation from the inside-out, showing firms how they can create innovations inside their own companies. This book is written from an “outside-in” perspective, showing how executives, investors, and analysts can assess the impact of a new innovation on the firms they have a vested interest in.

This paper proposes a model of the factors that affect a company''s ability to capture the returns from its investments in research. The nature of the technology and the organizational configuration of the firm together determine how a company can capture value from its research. Under conditions of technological modularity, technologies developed in one company''s research laboratories might "leak" into the open market. Under conditions of technological integrality, firms that conduct research can capture better the returns from their investments in creating new technology. The key is to align organizational structure with the character of technology. Under modular conditions, centralized structures impose inappropriate overheads; firms need to organize themselves in a decentralization fashion to capture value here. Under integral conditions, however, decentralization cannot coordinate complex interdependencies, and centralized structures are necessary to realize value.

Recent cutbacks in the scale and scope of research being conducted in the laboratories of companies that developed some of today''s most commercially valuable technologies -- at companies such as Lucent Technologies (Bell Laboratories), IBM, Xerox, Alcoa and General Electric -- have raised concerns about whether the short-term financial performance pressures imposed on today''s managers might compromise the longer-term growth potential in our economy. This paper proposes a model of the factors that affect a company''s ability to capture the returns from its investments in research, grounded in several case studies. It suggests that under conditions of technological modularity, technologies developed in one company''s research laboratories are very likely to "leak" into the open market to the benefit of many firms; whereas under conditions of technological integrality, firms that conduct research are much more able to capture the returns from their investments in creating new technology. Those industries in which companies are continuing to invest aggressively in research, such as pharmaceuticals and chemicals, tend to be based upon integral technologies, whereas products in industries where research is being scaled back, such as electronics and telecommunications, have become technologically modular. This paper asserts that we might expect technology in most industries to swing back and forth between integrality and modularity. This means that firms'' abilities to profit from technological or scientific research are likely also to wax and wane.

In computers, telecommunications, and related industries, dramatic changes are occurring in the nature and extent of vertical integration. Some firms are divesting some of their upstream component production operations, others are decoupling stages in their value chains--selling components in merchant or OEM markets--while others, such as those entering wireless communications or multimedia industries, are aggressively integrating. This paper explores the factors that drive firms'' decisions to integrate or disintegrate through a detailed, historical analysis of vertical integration in the disk drive industry. The paper finds two primary reasons for moves to greater or less vertical integration in the industry. The first is the degree of modularity and component standardization in product designs. The second is scale economics.

This paper contends that product development, rather than R & D, constitutes the technical foundation for new businesses. R & D by nature is a defensive activity, capable only of sustaining current product-market positions. Product development and R & D are fundamentally different enterprises, in terms of scope, time, targetable objectives, and cost. Pioneering firms integrate backward into component or materials manufacturing, and the R & D required to support these activities, because in an industry''s nascent years, the necessary materials and components cannot be purchased. When pioneering firms dominated their early industries, as did IBM, AT & T, RCA, General Motors and General Electric, their control over the pace of product performance improvement and product development cycle enabled them to coordinate reasonably well the development of new component technology with the design of new products that used the componentry. However, in maturing markets, when competitive forces dictate the development cycle and technological trajectory, coordinating developments in new component technology with new product development becomes impossible. At this point, unless firms change strategy and begin selling components and sub-assemblies into merchant or OEM markets at upstream points in the value chain, they will be unable to reap commercial benefit from research and development efforts.