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What Clayton Christensen Got Wrong (2013)

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Re: What Clayton Christensen Got Wrong (2013)

#11

Post by fasteddie »

minthd wrote: post #4

That's a very interesting theory, but it's supported by very few examples, and the examples are pretty weak. In the example of clothing and fashion - the consumer really buys buys psychological value(status, attention, etc), not user experience with his extra money, and i'm not sure those goods can be "good enough", because some have arms-race logic build internally(for example status). In a sense, the same applies f…

The author missed that we are actually seeing significant movement towards modularization in video games -- PC gaming is/has been growing at the expense of consoles the last few years.

Re: What Clayton Christensen Got Wrong (2013)

#12

Post by mark212 »

_pius wrote: post #3
sschwartz wrote: post #2

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/23/the-disruption-...

This article is pretty bad. The OP, however, is quite good. In a nutshell, it argues that (1) disruption theory assumes rational actors and (2) consumers are much less rational than businesses.

in other fora, Ben argues that the main failing of Christiansen's theory is that it was formed in an era where most tech (either by number of products or total spend) was not purchased by the end users. Now that consumers buy their own stuff, success is determined on a different set of metrics including look and feel / UX, which means that "good enough" (disruption by low end) may not ever happen.

Re: What Clayton Christensen Got Wrong (2013)

#13

Post by snom320 »

blowski wrote: post #9
minthd wrote: post #4

That's a very interesting theory, but it's supported by very few examples, and the examples are pretty weak. In the example of clothing and fashion - the consumer really buys buys psychological value(status, attention, etc), not user experience with his extra money, and i'm not sure those goods can be "good enough", because some have arms-race logic build internally(for example status). In a sense, the same applies f…

> the consumer really buys buys psychological value I think that's what the author is saying - businesses don't buy printers thinking about how the printer will make their staff feel, whereas when people buy iPhones, how they feel is a big part of the decision. The idea that I can afford to buy an excellent user experience for myself is very much part of that status value. Apple has exploited those feelings so that i…

I think the important point is not that it just outweighs what can be achieved by modularisation, but that it is fundamentally more difficult to achieve using modularisation. Had that not been the case, you would expect companies that emulated the psychological value _and_ used the modularisation path to make more money than Apple would.

Re: What Clayton Christensen Got Wrong (2013)

#14

Post by mark212 »

minthd wrote: post #4

That's a very interesting theory, but it's supported by very few examples, and the examples are pretty weak. In the example of clothing and fashion - the consumer really buys buys psychological value(status, attention, etc), not user experience with his extra money, and i'm not sure those goods can be "good enough", because some have arms-race logic build internally(for example status). In a sense, the same applies f…

> the consumer really buys buys psychological value(status, attention, etc), not user experience

please explain the difference, other than what seems to be your pejorative value placed on psychology. Why would it be bad to want to feel good when using a piece of tech and prefer it over another piece of tech that is better on other metrics? Psychology (broadly stated) is the user experience.

Re: What Clayton Christensen Got Wrong (2013)

#15

Post by [deleted] »

fasteddie wrote: post #11
minthd wrote: post #4

That's a very interesting theory, but it's supported by very few examples, and the examples are pretty weak. In the example of clothing and fashion - the consumer really buys buys psychological value(status, attention, etc), not user experience with his extra money, and i'm not sure those goods can be "good enough", because some have arms-race logic build internally(for example status). In a sense, the same applies f…

The author missed that we are actually seeing significant movement towards modularization in video games -- PC gaming is/has been growing at the expense of consoles the last few years.

[deleted]

Re: What Clayton Christensen Got Wrong (2013)

#16

Post by fauigerzigerk »

I doubt very much that businesses are as rational as he makes them out to be. Many businesses buy extremely expensive software for completely irrational reasons or pay business consultants for obviously meaningless fluff.

The difference between consumers and businesses is that businesses that act too irrationally for too long are more likely to fail and get replaced by more rational businesses. I suspect that the statistics on rational businesses often suffer from survivor bias.

Re: What Clayton Christensen Got Wrong (2013)

#17

Post by [deleted] »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #16

I doubt very much that businesses are as rational as he makes them out to be. Many businesses buy extremely expensive software for completely irrational reasons or pay business consultants for obviously meaningless fluff. The difference between consumers and businesses is that businesses that act too irrationally for too long are more likely to fail and get replaced by more rational businesses. I suspect that the sta…

[deleted]

Re: What Clayton Christensen Got Wrong (2013)

#18

Post by mathattack »

I get a little bothered when people expect pundits like CC to be right 100% of the time. If they get nit-picked too much, then people stop making predictions. And CC may indeed be correct on the iPod - it had a great run, but sales are falling through the floor. Similarly, Apple is looking great in the iPhone, but it is still under attack on the low end.

Re: What Clayton Christensen Got Wrong (2013)

#19

Post by lemmingsleft »

Ben Thompson is mostly wrong: Customers don't 'buy' iPhones, Carriers do i.e. iPhones are protected from low end disruption by carriers subsidizing and obscuring the price with plans/contracts. In markets where carrier subsidy isn't as popular (e.g. Europe) iPhone market share is very low. Likewise, iPad market share is dropping quickly becausr there are few subsidies for that product.

NB Apple was always careful to sell low end iPods like the nano and shuffle so they continuously disrupted themselves in that product market and kept other companies from doing so.

Re: What Clayton Christensen Got Wrong (2013)

#20

Post by screature2 »

I guess this is a 2013 article, but I'm surprised that what hasn't been mentioned in the comments yet are the platform/network effects of iOS apps and the App store.

I think it's interesting to identify a consumer focus on status/UX/psychological benefits, but I actually think it's wrong to say that the consumer isn't paying for more functionality because I think the iOS app ecosystem actually provides pretty compelling additional functionality in addition to the incremental, but still relatively meaty, upgrades between phone models and nominally nicer UX.

I mean, the App Store is still much better curated than its open Android counterpart. The iOS development seems to have more robust developer tools, offer better return, have a more or less standard device structure for testing, etc etc. (http://thinkapps.com/blog/development/platform-build-first-i...)

The iOS ecosystem isn't just the handsets. It's the App store, the developer tools, etc. This allows developers to better create functionality on top of all these Apple devices and enables Apple to surface those quality apps/functionality better and faster. That's a significant benefit.

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