Meeting the Challenge of Disruptive Change

The article is about the construction of a company - and how this limits what it is good at. This is based on three things:

• Resources
• Processes
• Values

These allow a business to create value within its current remit. If the combination of the three is attempted to be used for innovative projects it might lead to failure if the new innovation is not compatible with this combination.

On top of this the profit margin and the minimum size of opportunity that is interesting to a company changes as it grows. This means that opportunities that are small today (but will be big tomorrow) are not compatible with the current setup.

Overtime the successful actions of individuals become the processes/values on which the company then relies. These are hard to change, determine resource allocation, and mean companies can only do what they are setup to do and nothing more.

This article is ostensively about disruption, but there is a good deal of general management theory in there too.

[Lightweight and functional] teams are tools for exploiting established capabilities