Techdirt Reading List: The Disruption Dilemma

We're back again with another in our weekly reading list posts of books we think our community will find interesting and thought provoking. Once again, buying the book via the Amazon links in this story also helps support Techdirt.

As regular readers likely know, I'm a big fan of Clayton Christensen's famous book The Innovator's Dilemma and the concept of disruptive innovation put forth in that book (more accurately, I became a fan prior to the book coming out, when the Harvard Business Review article discussing the innovator's dilemma came out prior to the book). Many years back, I even tried to explain Christensen's concept in just two minutes at a whiteboard.

Of course, over the years, the popularity of "The Innovator's Dilemma" and the phrase "disruptive innovation" has meant that many people like to use the phrase without having any understanding of what it really means. Many people seem to think that "disruptive innovation" just means "breaking shit" or "ignoring all the rules." That's not what it actually means. Earlier this year, Joshua Gans released a book called The Disruption Dilemma that is both something of a critique / update on Christensen's work, but also providing some useful ways of looking at and thinking about innovation. If you're a fan of disruptive innovation and want to better understand it, this is a worthwhile read.

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