Most Companies Think Of Disruption As A

If You Just Look At The Data, You Are Led To Believe That Things Are Getting Better, Rather Than Worse. That's Why The Fall Is Really Precipitous, Once You Hit The Ceiling.

One Reason There Are So Many Short-lived Management Fads Is That Their Prescriptions Were Derived And Advocated In Precisely This Way. So Managers Read About A Fad And Try It, Find That It Doesn't Work, Abandon The Effort, And Move On To The Next Thing. In Reality, It Is Usually The Case That The Faddish Prescription Was Indeed Sound Advice In Certain Circumstances, But Actually Was Poor Advice In Other Circumstances.

In My First Career I Had Founded My Own Company, With A Group Of Mit Professors, Before Coming To Harvard To Finish My Doctorate, And So I Had A Deep Respect For The Brains, Talent, And Dedication Of Managers. That Made It Hard For Me To Believe The Attributions In The Business Press That Stupid Management Was To Blame. So I Looked Elsewhere For An Explanation.

The Transformation At The Corporate Level Was Achieved By Selling Off Business Units In Old Markets And By Creating New Business Units To Pursue The New Opportunities. But The Individual Business Units Themselves Within Those Transformed Corporations Were Almost Inert To Change.

There's Usually Some Process By Which A Potentially Great Idea Gets Prostituted Into Something Lacklustre, Or By Which The Wrong Idea Gets Put Forward.