“Seeing What’s Next” Part I

Following are questions relating to Part I of “Seeing What’s Next: using the theories of innovation to predict industry change” by Clayton M. Christensen:

 

 

1. Christensen notes that “One bedrock finding from our research is that companies innovate faster than customers’ lives change” (p. 12) and this leads to overshooting and products that are too good.  If this is the case, then why aren’t U.S. innovations keeping up with the technologies of countries like Korea and Japan (Internet and mobile)? It seems as though U.S. customers’ lives are ready for more innovation.
2. Christensen writes that “As a general rule, specialists cannot win unless their products can interface with the larger product system at appoints of well-defined modularity” (p. 15). What are some modern examples of this (other than Dell)?
3. “Bell’s licensing model led to the creation of thousands of local operators and numerous equipment suppliers…This hodgepodge of suppliers and providers created overwhelming management challenges. Coordination was difficult, network monitoring was next to impossible, operators experienced diseconomies of scale, and service quality suffered” (p. 11). How is this similar to today’s tech market/industries?

 

Additional Questions:

 

1. For what audience is this book written?
   
2. What are additional reasons, other than the offering of new solutions, that “New-market disruptive innovations have the greatest potential for long-term industry change” (p. 8)?