Research Highlight

Building a Business Creation Engine

In this webinar, Clayton M. Christensen and Derek van Bever discuss how executives can improve their odds of success at business model innovation.

Clayton M. Christensen, Derek van Bever, and Paul Michelman Reading Time: <1 minute

Topics

Recent research published in MIT Sloan Management Review suggests that most new business models in established companies follow a consistent path, beginning with the creation of the model/business unit, then shifting to sustaining and growing the business, and ultimately moving to wringing efficiency from it. Understanding these steps is crucial to creating a successful process for repeated business model innovation.

In January 2017, Clayton M. Christensen and Derek van Bever, coauthors of the MIT SMR article “The Hard Truth About Business Model Innovation,” led a webinar on how business models evolve over time. They demonstrated that an understanding of these stages allows leaders to correctly categorize the innovation opportunities they are considering in terms of their fit with their existing structure and priorities.

The speakers discussed:

  • The three stages of the business model journey, and how interdependencies among business model elements change over time
  • How to evaluate the fit between an opportunity and an existing business
  • Why a company should focus on creating new business models, rather than changing existing ones
  • How to turn an event — the act of creating a new business and a new business model — into a repeatable process

Topics

About the Authors

Clayton M. Christensen is the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Derek van Bever is a senior lecturer of business administration at Harvard Business School, as well as director of the Forum for Growth and Innovation. Paul Michelman is editor in chief of MIT Sloan Management Review.

Tags:

More Like This

Add a comment

You must to post a comment.

First time here? Sign up for a free account: Comment on articles and get access to many more articles.

Comments (2)
Kheepe Moremi
Business model innovation is certainly much more difficult and complex for an established and successful company whose business model does not appear to management to be facing imminent danger than it is for an established company that is either unsuccessful or a successful company whose "engine" appears to be in danger. 

Business model innovation is an even more "difficult sell" to boards of directors and stock-holders especially when the business model replacing the successful one cannot deliver equivalent cashflows to the firm and equity that the existing business model is delivering.
Jean Létourneau
The challene and the opportunity is in the design of a 21st century dynamic evolutioany framework that is fit for human beings  X  value creation. The framework must enable and include a migration path from a revolutionary intent to an evolutionary approach. 

Managenement systems are broken and dysfunctional, business models are out of touch with the reality and the measurement systems utility is long gone. Most of the change programs are all about catching-up!

The innovation that organisations need the most is the way they manage things. There is a need for new methods,  new tools and new measurment systems enabling organisations  to get the right things done right to seize the future and succeed in the 21st century!