In business theory, disruptive innovation is innovation that creates a new market and value network or enters at the bottom of an existing market and eventually displaces established market-leading firms, products, and alliances. The term, "disruptive innovation" was popularized by the American academic Clayton Christensen and his collaborators beginning in 1995, but the concept had been previously described in Richard N. Foster's book "Innovation: The Attacker's Advantage" and in the paper Strategic Responses to Technological Threats.
Clayton Magleby Christensen was an American academic and business consultant who developed the theory of "disruptive innovation", which has been called the most influential business idea of the early 21st century. Christensen introduced "disruption" in his 1997 book The Innovator's Dilemma, and it led The Economist to term him "the most influential management thinker of his time." He served as the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School (HBS), and was also a leader and writer in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One of the founders of the Jobs to Be Done development methodology.
The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) is an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States and dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of complex adaptive systems, including physical, computational, biological, and social systems. The institute is ranked 24th among the world's "Top Science and Technology Think Tanks" and 24th among the world's "Best Transdisciplinary Research Think Tanks" according to the 2020 edition of the Global Go To Think Tank Index Reports, published annually by the University of Pennsylvania.
Michael Eugene Porter is an American academic known for his theories on economics, business strategy, and social causes. He is the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at Harvard Business School, and was one of the founders of the consulting firm The Monitor Group and FSG, a social impact consultancy. He is credited for creating Porter's five forces analysis, which is instrumental in business strategy development at present. He is generally regarded as the father of the modern strategy field. He is also regarded as one of the world's most influential thinkers on management and competitiveness as well as one of the most influential business strategists. His work has been recognized by governments, non governmental organizations and universities.
John Paul Kotter is the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, at the Harvard Business School, an author, and the founder of Kotter International, a management consulting firm based in Seattle and Boston. He is a thought leader in business, leadership, and change.
Harvard Business Review (HBR) is a general management magazine published by Harvard Business Publishing, a not-for-profit, independent corporation that is an affiliate of Harvard Business School. HBR is published six times a year and is headquartered in Brighton, Massachusetts.
Cluster development is the economic development of business clusters. The cluster concept has rapidly attracted attention from governments, consultants, and academics since it was first proposed in 1990 by Michael Porter.
John Seely Brown, also known as "JSB", is an American researcher who specializes in organizational studies with a particular bend towards the organizational implications of computer-supported activities. Brown served as Director of Xerox PARC from 1990 to 2000 and as Chief Scientist at Xerox from 1992 to 2002; during this time the company played a leading role in the development of numerous influential computer technologies. Brown is the co-author of The Social Life of Information, a 2000 book which analyzes the adoption of information technologies.
Constantinos C. Markides is a Cypriot management educator and, since 1990, the Robert P. Bauman Professor of Strategic Leadership at London Business School. He is known for his work on strategic disruption and business models which is particularly illustrated in his book Game Changing Strategies published in 2008. He was listed among the Forbes.com list of Most Influential Management Gurus (2009).
Thomas Hayes "Tom" Davenport, Jr. is an American academic and author specializing in analytics, business process innovation, knowledge management, and artificial intelligence. He is currently the President’s Distinguished Professor in Information Technology and Management at Babson College, a Fellow of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, Co-founder of the International Institute for Analytics, and a Senior Advisor to Deloitte Analytics.
Vijay Govindarajan, popularly known as VG, is the Coxe Distinguished Professor at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business and Marvin Bower Fellow, 2015–16 at Harvard Business School. He is a Faculty Partner in the Silicon Valley Incubator Mach49. He worked as General Electric's innovation consultant and professor in residence from 2008 to 2010. He is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling author and a two-time winner of the McKinsey Award for the best article published in Harvard Business Review. VG was inducted into the Thinkers 50 Hall of Fame in 2019 for his life-long work dedicated to the field of management, strategy, and innovation. VG received Thinkers 50 Distinguished Achievement Awards in two different categories: Breakthrough Idea Award in 2011 and Innovation Award in 2019.
Monitor Deloitte is the multinational strategy consulting practice of Deloitte Consulting. Monitor Deloitte specializes in providing strategy consultation services to the senior management of major organizations and governments. It helps its clients address a variety of management areas, including: Organic Growth, Strategic Transformation, Innovation and Ventures, Business Design and Configuration, Strategic Sensing and Insight Services.
Tara L. Lemméy is an American entrepreneur, inventor, designer, technology expert, and innovation strategist. She is CEO and founder of LENS Ventures, an innovation and investment firm based in San Francisco. Lemméy was named one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business in 2013 by Fast Company (magazine) and one of the MCP 1000: The Most Creative People in Business. She is an inventor with over seventy US and international utility and design patents.
Jeffrey F. Rayport is an academic, author, consultant, and founder and chairman of Marketspace LLC, a strategic advisory practice that works with leading companies to reinvent how they interact with and relate to customers. Marketspace was a unit of Monitor Deloitte, a global strategy services and merchant banking firm, which now operates as an independent professional services firm.
An infomediary works as a personal agent on behalf of consumers to help them take control over information gathered about them for use by marketers and advertisers. The concept of the infomediary was first suggested by former McKinsey consultant John Hagel III and former Harvard Business School professor Jeffrey Rayport in their article The Coming Battle for Customer Information. The concept was explored in greater depth in Hagel's book Net Worth: Shaping Markets When Customers Make the Rules.
Joshua "Josh" M. Greenberg is an American academic working in sociology of scientific knowledge. Greenberg is Program Director for Digital Information Technology at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Previously he was the Director of Digital Strategy and Scholarship at the New York Public Library (NYPL). His interests encompass the intersection of scholarship, education and information technology. His initiatives at NYPL engaged the nascent disciplines of digital asset management.
Hidden champions are relatively small but highly successful companies that are concealed behind a curtain of inconspicuousness, invisibility, and sometimes secrecy. The term was coined by Hermann Simon. He first used the term as a title of a publication in a scientific German management journal, describing the small, highly specialized world-market leaders in Germany. According to his definition, a company must meet three criteria to be considered a hidden champion:
Michael J. Mauboussin heads consilient research at Morgan Stanley division Morgan Stanley Investment Management's Counterpoint Global, an open-end mutual fund. Previously, he was director of research at BlueMountain Capital and head of global financial strategies at Credit Suisse, where he advised clients on valuation and portfolio positioning, capital markets theory, competitive strategy analysis, and decision making. He is also an adjunct professor of finance at the Columbia Business School and serves as chairman emeritus of the board of trustees at the Santa Fe Institute, a multi-disciplinary research center for complex adaptive systems, after serving as its chairman from 2012 until retiring in May 2021.
John D. Halamka, M.D., M.S., is an American business executive and physician. He is president of the Mayo Clinic Platform, a group of digital and long-distance health care initiatives.
Dorothy A. Leonard is an American professor of business administration specialized in knowledge management. She is the William J. Abernathy professor of business administration emerita at the Harvard Business School.
