Given my background I figured databases were a good place to develop and use innovation theory. This industry is showing clear signals of change for a while now.
I plan to apply the theory of innovation as presented by Clayton Christensen in "Seeing What's Next".
A quick database historical summary:
Databases are software for managing data and information within organizations. The industry took off when the first relational databases were developed. Databases are one of the most important IT parts of any company. The recent explosion of Open Source software has lead to a couple of new database vendors.
I am going to concentrate on Oracle, Microsoft SQLserver and MySQL.
Oracle was one of the first companies to introduce a relational database. It has followed the innovation path of increasing features and better performance for the most demanding customers, basically following the classic trajectory. Oracle is rightly seen as an industry leader in databases, delivering cutting edge functionality and performance to the enterprise market.
Microsoft SQL server partnered with Sybase to produce an relational database product for its move into the enterprise server market. Following its bundling strategy which has worked well in other areas of software it provided a complete server/database solution. This strategy also provided a smooth path to upgrade for companies which had outgrown the Microsoft Access database on individual PCs.
MySQL is a "free" software database released under GPL. As the Open Source/Free software movement increased with the release of different similar licensed Unix distributions (Linux, Open BSD) the use of MySQL increased. The ability to have a database which could be queried using SQL enabled people who couldn't or wouldn't afford a database to now use a database.
So we have an industry leader, servicing the most demanding customers with good margins and we have two other companies both attacking from below, with products which in the beginning were not good enough for those demanding customers.
I am going to look more closely at the signals of change in the next blog.
Have Fun
Paul
Sunday, December 11, 2005
Monday, November 21, 2005
The tools of Analysis
The innovators collection have reference notes to Michael Porter's Five Force Analysis.
A quick google search provides plenty of hits on Michael Porter.
I choose the wikipedia entry as a start as it provides a nice profile of his work.
Wikipedia is also good as it provides plenty of links (if it has been written and edited well) to other useful wiki-links and also to other websites.
A more refined search for his Harvard Business Review paper "How competitive forces shape strategy" finds plenty of sites. If that doesn't provide enough information to understand the concept searching for "Five Forces Analysis" finds more sites with distilled summaries of the work.
I recommend starting with the wikipedia entry on Five Forces Analysis
Using Google to search is the first step, you should go and check some of the websites which had a good pagerank (at least 2 or 3 deep sometimes) and see how the keywords fit within the site. All of the main keyword search "Michael Porter", "How competitive forces shape strategy" and "Five Forces Analysis" were referenced from business consultant websites to marketing websites to university lecture notes. This gives a good feel for how important the work is.
I have a couple of industries which I would like to perform innovation analysis on, however I am open to suggestions.
Have Fun
A quick google search provides plenty of hits on Michael Porter.
I choose the wikipedia entry as a start as it provides a nice profile of his work.
Wikipedia is also good as it provides plenty of links (if it has been written and edited well) to other useful wiki-links and also to other websites.
A more refined search for his Harvard Business Review paper "How competitive forces shape strategy" finds plenty of sites. If that doesn't provide enough information to understand the concept searching for "Five Forces Analysis" finds more sites with distilled summaries of the work.
I recommend starting with the wikipedia entry on Five Forces Analysis
Using Google to search is the first step, you should go and check some of the websites which had a good pagerank (at least 2 or 3 deep sometimes) and see how the keywords fit within the site. All of the main keyword search "Michael Porter", "How competitive forces shape strategy" and "Five Forces Analysis" were referenced from business consultant websites to marketing websites to university lecture notes. This gives a good feel for how important the work is.
I have a couple of industries which I would like to perform innovation analysis on, however I am open to suggestions.
Have Fun
Welcome
Welcome to DisruptionCity,
In an effort to understand the ideas put forward by Clayton Christensen within the "Innovators Dilemma", "Innovators Solution" and "Seeing What's Next", I am going to analyze different industries to see where disruptive and sustaining innovations are occurring and could possibly occur.
The analysis of innovations within each chosen industry will draw heavily of the theory provided in the "Seeing What's Next" and other sources which have been referenced heavily throughout each of the three books.
In performing analysis using this theory I hope to gain a better understanding of the innovation theory.
Any feedback is more than welcome.
Lets go!
In an effort to understand the ideas put forward by Clayton Christensen within the "Innovators Dilemma", "Innovators Solution" and "Seeing What's Next", I am going to analyze different industries to see where disruptive and sustaining innovations are occurring and could possibly occur.
The analysis of innovations within each chosen industry will draw heavily of the theory provided in the "Seeing What's Next" and other sources which have been referenced heavily throughout each of the three books.
In performing analysis using this theory I hope to gain a better understanding of the innovation theory.
Any feedback is more than welcome.
Lets go!
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