Clayton Christensen's Innovation Brain

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Disruption really is a business model innovation. Most disruptions have a technological enabler that [allows] people to make simpler products that are more affordable and accessible for people. In The Innovator's Solution, I recanted. We called it disruptive innovation [rather than disruptive technology]. Basically I was wrong in labeling it a technological phenomenon.

In The Innovator's Dilemma you warn that the maxim "staying close to your customers" can lead you astray. Wouldn't a cursory reading of the book say "don't listen to your customers?"
You're exactly right. The cursory reading is "don't listen." The deep reading is you have to be careful which customers you listen to, and then you need to watch what they do, not listen to what they say. This is catching on with one of the big automobile companies in Detroit. If you look for the jobs that people hire a car to do, the opportunities for innovation are extraordinary.

There are about 30 million Americans for whom [a car] serves as their office. Isn't it interesting that nobody has designed a car to work as an office? They pull up to Starbucks (SBUX) and go in to use their T-Mobile hot spot or if they're in Silicon Valley they'll pull up next to someone's apartment building to mooch off their Wi-Fi because they can't access the Internet in their car.

They stop at a stoplight, their notebook computer falls onto the floor. They can't recharge their computer because the electrical system was not designed to do it and there's no docking station. They throw sales literature in the backseats. Nobody's designed a car to do that job. If you understand the job, the opportunities to differentiate are just extraordinary.

To do that, though, you do have to "stay close to your customers" to see what jobs they need. In a sense, they will lead you to the answer, not astray. Shouldn't Dilemma have been clearer on that, or expanded on that idea?
Yes. The problem is when you say "listen to your customers," your customers are only going to lead you in a direction that they want to go in. Generally, that will never lead you to disruptive growth. You've got to find that new set of customers, and listen to them and follow them. That's the trick. Once you have customers, they hold you captive to their needs.

Your book also focused on entrants disrupting established players at the low end. What do you make of a company like Starbucks? Didn't it come in at the high end with its $3 lattes?
It's interesting. The principle, which is a lot clearer to me 10 years later, is that disruption is a relative phenomenon. What Starbucks did was to come into the middle of the market. They disrupted the sit-down restaurants. The job people hire Starbucks to do is to help them to sit down and have a conversation, have an informal meeting. Before Starbucks, you had to go to a restaurant to sit down and have lunch, which was a lot more expensive. Starbucks disrupted that. They made it affordable and simple for a lot of people to go in and have these discussions.

You've said "the most widespread and dangerous misunderstanding of the model is the equation of 'new' or 'breakthrough' with disruption." Yet today, I feel like "disruptive" has become just that: A synonym executives use when they're describing something big or bold. Why is that dangerous?
Because it causes them to think that, "I'll just take whatever hobby horse I have, because Clay's study showed that disruptive products create these new growth markets. I'll cause everyone to believe my idea's going to do that." In fact, big technological leapfrogs rarely create new growth. Almost all of them are defensive in character. The equation of disruptive with new and radical causes people to target markets that don't exist.