Powerful ideas from top nonfiction
Try Blinkist to get the key ideas from 7,500+ bestselling nonfiction titles and podcasts. Listen or read in just 15 minutes.
Start your free trial
Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
Listen to the Intro
The Innovator’s Dilemma summary
When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail
14 mins
Brief summary
The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen explains how successful companies fail by sticking to their established business models, overlooking disruptive innovations. It offers a framework to help managers anticipate and respond to market changes.
Table of Contents
The Innovator’s Dilemma
Summary of 3 key ideas
Audio & text in the Blinkist app
Key idea 1 of 3
Who needs cheap radios?
We’re in the United States and it’s the early 1950s. The war is over. People feel hopeful. The economy is booming. More households have more disposable income than ever before, and they’re spending it.
That’s good news for all kinds of industries, from carmakers to the manufacturers of refrigerators. It’s also great for consumer electronics companies like RCA and Zenith. One of their top sellers is the vacuum tube music console – a handsomely veneered cabinet with an integrated radio that sits at the center of middle-class living rooms across the nation.
These consoles are well-made, sturdy objects. More to the point, they’re highly engineered and sound great. All that makes them expensive, but that’s not a problem. This is an age of affluence, and people can afford to pay top dollar for what matters to them – quality. And so that’s what companies focus on. They tinker and improve and continue making big, expensive consoles that sound great.
And that’s when a small Japanese firm called Sony enters the picture. Founded in 1946 with around $6,000 start-up capital, it still has fewer than twenty employees. But Sony’s chairman, Akio Morita, has an idea.
He takes up residence in a cheap hotel in New York City and starts negotiating a license to patented transistor technology owned by the American telecommunications company AT&T. Morita gets his license, but AT&T executives are baffled by his plan to use the technology to build small radios. Why would anyone care about small radios, they ask. His answer is cryptic: “Let’s see.”
Sony’s portable transistor radio appears on the market in ’55. It’s a terrible radio. The static is so loud you can hardly hear the music, and the fidelity is much lower than those vacuum tube consoles. If you’re an affluent household that values sound quality, there’s no chance you’re buying a Sony radio! But what if you don’t have a lot of disposable cash? What if, in other words, you’re a typical American teenager? Well, the alternative to crappy transistor radios for ’50s teenagers is no radio, and so they start buying a lot of Sony radios!
You can probably guess where this story is going. Sony’s crappy radios give the company a crowbar to prize open the American market. And, slowly but surely, transistor technology improves. By the time it’s so good that it becomes interesting to more affluent market segments – those teenagers’ parents, say – it’s already too late for companies like RCA and Zenith to catch up to Sony.
That is how Sony came to dominate the radio market in the United States.
Want to see all full key ideas from The Innovator’s Dilemma?
Key ideas in The Innovator’s Dilemma
More knowledge in less time
Read or listen
Get the key ideas from nonfiction bestsellers in minutes, not hours.
Find your next read
Get book lists curated by experts and personalized recommendations.
Shortcasts New
We’ve teamed up with podcast creators to bring you key insights from podcasts.
What is The Innovator’s Dilemma about?
The Innovator’s Dilemma explains why so many well-established companies fail dismally when faced with the emerging markets they create. This Blink focuses on one of the book’s central themes: disruptive innovation.
The Innovator’s Dilemma Review
The Innovator’s Dilemma (1997) is a thought-provoking exploration of disruptive innovation, explaining why successful companies often fail to adapt to new technologies. Here's why this book is worth reading:
- Provides a new perspective on innovation, challenging conventional wisdom and offering insights into the challenges faced by established companies.
- Offers numerous real-world examples that illustrate the concepts discussed, making it both relatable and applicable to various industries.
- Presents a compelling argument for the need to balance short-term gains with long-term innovation, keeping readers engaged and invested in the topic.
Who should read The Innovator’s Dilemma?
- Anyone interested in why big companies are so vulnerable to disruptive technologies
- Business executives
- Anyone who wants to take advantage of technological innovations
Categories with The Innovator’s Dilemma
Book summaries like The Innovator’s Dilemma
People ❤️ Blinkist
Sven O.
It's highly addictive to get core insights on personally relevant topics without repetition or triviality. Added to that the apps ability to suggest kindred interests opens up a foundation of knowledge.
Thi Viet Quynh N.
Great app. Good selection of book summaries you can read or listen to while commuting. Instead of scrolling through your social media news feed, this is a much better way to spend your spare time in my opinion.
Jonathan A.
Life changing. The concept of being able to grasp a book's main point in such a short time truly opens multiple opportunities to grow every area of your life at a faster rate.
Renee D.
Great app. Addicting. Perfect for wait times, morning coffee, evening before bed. Extremely well written, thorough, easy to use.
People also liked these summaries
4.7 Stars
Average ratings on iOS and Google Play
33 Million
Downloads on all platforms
10+ years
Experience igniting personal growth
The Innovator’s Dilemma FAQs
What is the main message of The Innovator’s Dilemma?
The main message of The Innovator’s Dilemma is the importance of disruptive innovation for businesses to succeed.
How long does it take to read The Innovator’s Dilemma?
The reading time for The Innovator’s Dilemma can vary, but the Blinkist summary can be read in just 15 minutes.
Is The Innovator’s Dilemma a good book? Is it worth reading?
The Innovator’s Dilemma is worth reading for its insights on disruptive innovation and its impact on business success.
Who is the author of The Innovator’s Dilemma?
The author of The Innovator’s Dilemma is Clayton Christensen.
What to read after The Innovator’s Dilemma?
If you're wondering what to read next after The Innovator’s Dilemma, here are some recommendations we suggest:
- The Art of War (new version) by Sun Tzu
- Measure What Matters by John Doerr
- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
- Sun Tzu and the Art of Business by Mark R. McNeilly
- How to Think Like a Roman Emperor by Donald Robertson
- Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
- Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore
- The Daily Laws by Robert Greene
- Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim
- Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt