Clayton Christensen

Clayton Christensen: Program Outlines

Future Opportunities for Growth in Information Technology

In this session Christensen will draw upon several models that have emerged in his study of innovation to examine the future of information technology. He’ll explore which system architectures are likely to become most prevalent, and which vendors will supply them. The long-range competitive implications of outsourcing information services will also be examined; and he’ll offer some tools that IT managers can use to ensure that the services they offer meet the most pressing needs of company management.

• To beat powerful competitors, companies should pick the fights powerful competitors either cannot or will not contest by either seeking out non-consumers who will welcome a simple product or by launching an attack on the low-end of an incumbent’s market among customers the incumbent is actually happy to lose. Tomorrow's most pervasive technologies are unlikely to come from today's leaders.

• To connect with customers, companies must develop a product that successfully matches a circumstance that customers find themselves in. Traditional means of defining markets – like product categories or demographics – often run counter to how customers live their lives and therefore do not help companies successfully connect with customers.

• In circumstances where products are not good enough to meet customer needs, a company needs to be integrated to improve the product’s functionality. In circumstances where the product is more than good enough, focused firms can beat competitors with speed, responsiveness and customization.

• In highly uncertain situations that typify disruptive innovations, companies can follow a rigorous process by using an emergent strategy supported by a discovery-driven planning process that enables them to adjust their strategy when they encounter unanticipated opportunities, problems and successes.

• CEOs needs to get involved in circumstances when a company’s standard processes are not designed to do what needs to get done.

Technological Enablers for Reducing Cost and Improving Accessibility of Quality Health Care

Much of the discourse on making our health care system accessible relates to insuring the uninsured – with the unspoken assumption that the level and rate of increase in costs are what they are. This isn't the case. Technological enablers, coupled with business model innovation, have the promise of dramatically reducing the cost and improving the accessibility of quality health care. Christensen will talk about what these innovations are, and how they can be implemented.

The History of Healthcare: From Intuitive to Precision Medicine

In the absence of the ability to precisely define a disease, the care of patients is best undertaken by highly skilled professionals, whose intuition is based on deep experience. This describes the history of health care, and it is called the practice of intuitive medicine. Molecular biology holds the promise of transforming medical practice into a new phase that is called precision medicine. Christensen will discuss why it promises to dramatically reduce cost and increase the predictable effectiveness of therapy.

Fixing the Health Care Business Model

The process of making products and services more affordable and accessible begins when historically expensive expertise is commoditized. This has happened in every industry Christensen has studied, and healthcare is no different.

In healthcare, this process is heavily dependent upon the ability to make a precise diagnosis, which is driven by molecular and imaging diagnostics. These technologies need to be coupled with business model innovation.

One reason why healthcare is so expensive, and quality of care so inconsistent, is that today’s hospitals and physician practices are actually a conflated set of business models. In this session, Christensen will explain these problems and recommend solutions.

Increasing the Probability for Success of a VC-Funded Startup

Historically the probability that a venture capital-funded startup will succeed has been approximately 20 percent. In Christensen’s talk he'll contend that entrepreneurs can dramatically increase the probability of success if they make certain key decisions with the guidance of a few well-researched theories. He will describe what these theories or models are, and how they can be used to shape a great company.

Disruptive Innovation and Catalytic Change in Higher Education

Christensen will describe the root causes for why our schools have struggled to improve, and how to solve these problems.

• America’s public schools have in fact been improving at an impressive rate for several decades. The problem is that the definition of improvement has changed.
• The interdependent architecture of our present system mandates standardization in the way we teach and test. The problem is the differences in students’ learning styles or types of intelligence mandate modularity in teaching and testing.
• Heavyweight teams always are required to define new product and service architectures. The problem is that architectural reform cannot be done within the functional structure of existing schools. Only functional improvement is possible. Chartered and pilot schools are heavyweight teams.
• America’s poor performance in science, math and engineering is caused by diminished extrinsic motivation. Comfort and prosperity are the culprits; intrinsic motivation is our only hope.
• Multiplicity of jobs requires multiple business models to address them.

Disruptive Strategies for Creating New Markets or Reshaping Existing Markets

Christensen will explain disruption, the mechanism by which great companies continue to succeed and new entrants displace the market leaders. Disruptive innovations either create new markets or reshape existing markets by delivering relatively simple, convenient, low cost innovations to a set of customers who are ignored by industry leaders.

One of the bedrock principles of Christensen's disruptive innovation theory is that companies innovate faster than customers' lives change. Because of this, most organizations end up producing products that are too good, too expensive, and too inconvenient for many customers. By only pursuing these "sustaining" innovations, companies unwittingly open the door to "disruptive" innovations, be it "low-end disruption" targeting overshot-less-demanding customers or "new-market disruption", targeting non-consumers.

Creating New Growth Through Disruptive Innovation

Christensen will explain why many of today’s markets that appear to have little growth remaining, actually have great growth potential through disruptive innovations that transform complicated, expensive products into simple, affordable ones.

Successful innovation seems unpredictable because innovators rely excessively on data, which is only available about the past. They have not been equipped with sound theories that do not allow them to see the future perceptively. This problem has been solved.

Understanding the customer is the wrong unit of analysis for successful innovation. Understanding the job that the customer is trying to do is the key.

Many innovations that have extraordinary growth potential fail, not because of the product or service itself, but because the company forced it into an inappropriate business model instead of creating a new optimal one.

Companies with disruptive products and business models are the ones whose share prices increase faster than the market over sustained periods.