How Disruption Sparks Growth: Clayton M. Christensen’s Innovative Approach to Beating Competitors [Guru Advice #003]

Advice from the World's Best Leadership and Management Thinkers

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Clayton M. Christensen was known for his theory of disruptive innovation, an idea that reshaped how businesses think about competition. He noticed that big, established firms often concentrate on improving existing products for high-end customers, leaving the lower tier of the market wide open. Start-ups see this as an opening to introduce cheaper, simpler products that larger companies view as too marginal to worry about. But as these smaller players improve their offerings, they edge upward in quality, seize more of the market, and sometimes overtake the incumbents.