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Disruptive Innovation - Clayton Christensen (Part 2)

modplanman
Lectures
YouTube
2 HN users recommended this lecture2 months2014–2017 score 2.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN recommends it as an amazing, clear explanation of why incumbents move upmarket and lose to low-end challengers.

Clayton Christensen explains disruptive innovation using the steel industry, showing how mini-mills beat incumbents from the low end. He argues disruption is not about stupid or bad management.

“Here's part of a great talk from Christensen describing the same logic but in the Steel industry” (HN, 2014)

1 strong recommendations · 1 recommendations · 1 citations · Lectures · intro

3 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@reqres Mar 2014 Recommends
on HN thread The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean
Read more
The logic you present is correct from the incumbent's perspective. But followed to its logical conclusion, it leads to the downfall of the incumbent according to Christensen's model of disruptive innovation. The incumbents will continually cater upmarket to their higher value customers while the challenger picks up more and more low value customers. But there's only so far upmarket you can go until you run out of customers and that's when the low end challenger has completely consumed the incumbent. I think much of this thread is a testament to the lower value customers being ignored. Things about how DO is much less complex, simpler and as a result cheaper. Here's part of a great talk from Christensen describing the same logic but in the Steel industry: [this video]
Christensen explains incumbents moving upmarket and losing to low-end challengers

Citations, criticism and jokes

@cornflake Jun 2017 Cites it
on HN thread 14 People Make 500K Tons of Steel a Year in Austria
The economics behind this disruptive innovation in the steel industry were broken down really well by Harvard professor Clayton Christensen in his writings and this clip: [this video]
Christensen's breakdown of steel industry economics

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