Innovator's Dilemma

Christensen Brief #1

1. As emphasized in Christensen's innovator's Dilemma, it is important that companies should be wary of emerging disruptive technologies threatening their business and develop management strategies to protect themselves. As part of a company's strategy in doing so, Strategic Capacity Management is a definite key factor as part of the plan to sustain business and plan for success.

According to the text Operations and Supply Chain Management, Strategic Capacity Management is defined as "the amount of output that a system is capable of achieving over a specific period of time." In other words, a company must carefully manage their capacity of resource inputs (which would include the labor force, hours, machinery equipment, and materials) to effectively produce product outputs. By knowing exactly how much of the input is required to produce the number of outputs, management can make important decisions on controlling their outputs to meet market demands and also control costs. Strategic Capacity Management would help address disruptive technology by understanding what their customers want and aligning their resources to meet demands.

The disk drive, the example given by Christensen, is an example of how great companies create a breakthrough technology but fail to sustain their business. Winchester first introduced the disk drive, a 14-inch drive with removable disks. Shortly after competitors are competing to create smaller compact disk drives, the 8 inch,5.25 inch, and 3.5. Winchester, the initiator of the technology, continued to only produce their 14 inch disk drive only appeal to their established customers and missing the train on appealing to a larger market for mainframe computers.

Interestingly, it was found that the 8 inch had become the more successful of the models. By contrast companies that produce disk drives smaller than the 8 inch drive failed for the opposing reason than Winchester. While Winchester listened and...