Harvard Business School Prof. Clay Christensen has made a fortune marketing his theories about the need to embrace disruptive innovation but that theory is coming under increasing attack.
Mr. Christensen became famous with the publication, in 1997, of his mega-bestseller “The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail.” 1997 was, of course, during the dot.com investment/speculation mania.
But some businesspeople, academics and others argue that the disrupters rarely win, and, as The Boston Globe reported, “the legion of executives — from startup founders to venture capitalists — who have enthusiastically embraced Christensen’s theory and built strategies around it might be in for a rude shock.”
