One pant leg on is a local maximum. One problem is solved but the larger set is not.
Clayton Christensen’s series on disruption and innovation is about local maximums.
Money machine go brrr is a strong incentive to keep printing. Maximizing a profitable business makes sense, which is the dilemma! Organizations find themselves looking good in one pant leg.
The solution to local maximums is exploration. But this is costly – money, status (uh oh), time, reputation. Plus the stakeholder’s opinions.
The solution, Clayton Christensen writes, is separation. Different groups with different strategies, finances, and when possible physical locations.
Solutions via exploration are important because customer and consumer preferences – their JTBD – change.
“We are all under the Disney umbrella,” Brian Burke said, “ESPN.com is a huge enterprise with an army of people and is a revenue generator in so many ways. It’s difficult to change course. FiveThirtyEight is agile, nimble, and experimental so (publishing there) was a great opportunity”.
ESPN.com go brrr.
Which is the dilemma, and Disney/ESPN uses FiveThirtyEight as the exploration solution. Who knows if Burke’s writing approach is better, but the publishing strategy is a solution to the innovator’s dilemma.
“The next ESPN.com” will be different. Whatever is next will have a different business model than the current Great Firms (Christensen’s subtitle). Whatever is next will have a different maximum. It will be a short vertical video or the degradation of the sport monoculture or something we can’t predict today.
Or even an analytic forward analysis from Brian Burke.
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