(2003-10-17) Innovators Solution

Ross Mayfield points to Dan Bricklin's review of Clayton Christensen's Innovators Solution. While it sounds like it's aimed at the heads of the big corporate (BigCo) world (which in many ways it is very explicitly) it is a real "how-to" book for Start Up-s and Entrepreneur-s. Many of its teachings will be "motherhood and apple-pie" to experienced innovators, but it offers an invaluable checklist, wonderful insights, and is a great catalyst to thinking. While reading it, I found that its theories help explain many successful ventures and spectacular (and not so spectacular) failures as you apply them to companies and products you know from the near and distant past. I know that I have a much better appreciation for the reasons for the success of my two biggest and most influential hits, VisiCalc and Dan Bricklin's Demo Program, as well as for the misses.