Business Policy and Strategy
Business Policy and Strategy
Read and study Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma carefully. Your answers
to the questions below should reflect your understanding of and mastery of
Christensen’s principal points in the book. Any responses that fail to address
Christensen’s arguments will be given a score of zero. The objective of this
assignment is for you to demonstrate mastery of the material. Your answers to
each question should be between 1-2 pages long (typed, single spaced).
1. There is a tendency in all markets for companies to move upmarket toward
more complicated products with higher prices. Why is it difficult for
established companies to enter markets for simpler, cheaper products?
Identify two companies that have upscaled themselves out of business. How
could they have avoided this?
2. One of the hallmarks of disruptive technologies is that initially they
underperform the current technology on the attributes that matter most to
mainstream customers. The companies that succeed in commercializing
them, therefore, must find different customers for whom the new technology’s
attributes are most valuable. Identify two markets that are emerging today
based on attributes or qualities that seemed unimportant to the mainstream
markets when they were introduced? (If you can’t think of anything, consider
the online education revolution as a topic to explore. Does anyone seriously
believe that bricks and mortar schools will be the dominant power in twenty
years?) When identifying the two markets, explain how older mainstream
products or companies are threatened.
3. Most people think that senior executives make the important decisions about
where a company will go and how it will invest its resources, but the real
power lies with the people deeper in the organization who decide which
proposals will be presented to senior management. What are the corporate
factors that lead midlevel employees to ignore or kill disruptive technologies?
Should well-managed companies change these practices and policies?
4. What do the findings in this book suggest about how companies will be
organized in the future in order to encourage the development and support of
disruptive technologies? Should large organizations with structures created
around functionalities redesign themselves into interconnected teams, as
some management theorists currently believe? Or, recognizing that different
technologies and different markets have differing needs, should they try to
have distinct organizational structures and management practices for different
circumstances? Is this realistically possible?
Please follow the instructions on the attachment and,
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future (1st Edition), Peter Thiel, Crown Business © 2014
The Innovator’s Dilemma (1st Edition), Clayton M. Christensen, HarperCollins Publishers © 2011
The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (3rd Edition), Thomas L. Friedman, Picador © 2007
Preferred language style US English
