Friday, May 31, 2013

Competitive Strategy Against a Disruptive Technology



Disruptive technologies and product from Napster, Amazon, and the Apple Store devastated Tower Records and Musicland; tiny, underpowered personal computers grew to replace minicomputers and mainframes; digital photography made film practically obsolete.


Present leading companies have to respond by developing  a disruption of their  own before it's too late to reap the rewards of participation in new, high-growth markets, as Procter & Gamble did with Swiffer, Dow Corning with Xiameter, and Apple with the iPod, iTunes, the iPad, and the iPhone.



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Disruption is not a a single event but a process that plays out over time, sometimes quickly and completely, but other times slowly and incompletely. There are many companies and businesses that survived disruptive technologies and making profits even today after many years of the appearance of successful disruptive technology. Therefore managers must not only disrupt themselves but also consider the fate of their legacy operations, for which decades or more of profitability may lie ahead.


Maxwell Wessell and Clayton Christensen proposed  a systematic way to help managers  fashion a more complete strategic response.

Disruptive innovations are like missiles launched at your business. You need to determine whether a missile will hit you dead-on, graze you, or pass you altogether. For that,  you need to:
• Identify the strengths of your disrupter's business model;
• Identify your own relative advantages;
• Evaluate the conditions that would help or hinder the disrupter from co-opting your current advantages in the future.


They introduced the concept of the extendable core--the aspect of its business model that allows the disrupter to maintain its performance advantage as it creeps upmarket in search of more and more customers. Then managers have to figure out what jobs people want still want their company to do for them--and what jobs the disrupter could do better with its extendable core. This  give a clearer picture of the  relative advantage of a company against a disrupter.  Then the barriers a disrupter would need to overcome to undermine the existing companies in the future are to be identified. This approach will enable a manager  to see which parts of the current business are most vulnerable to disruption and which parts  can be defended for signicant period of time.


Related Articles


Surviving Disruption
Wessel, Maxwell1 and Christensen, Clayton
Harvard Business Review; Dec2012, Vol. 90 Issue 12, p56-64, 9p



Stop Reinventing Disruption
by Maxwell Wessel,   March 7, 2013
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/03/stop_reinventing_disruption.html

Leveraging Disruptive Theory to Develop Up-Market Strategy
http://maxwellwessel.com/leveraging-disruptive-theory-to-develop-up-market-strategy/

Maxwell Wessel is with the Forum for Growth and Innovation at Harvard Business School


Sunday, May 26, 2013

26 May Knowledge History - Science, Engineering and Management



Birthdays


Laurance Spellman Rockefeller, American industrialist (Chase Manhattan Bank), conservationist and philanthropist and founder of the American Conservation Association, was born on May 26, 1910.


Jack ("Doctor Death") Kevorkian, American physician, was born on May 26, 1928.

Sally Kristen Ride, the first American astronaut in space, was born on May 26, 1951.

Washington Augustus Roebling, American engineer and architect, who built the Allegheny Suspension Bridge (in Pennsylvania) with his father, John Augustus Roebling and directed construction of the Brooklyn Bridge (New York), was born on May 26, 1837.

Nobel Prize Winners

Patents

1857 Robert Mushet received a patent for methods of manufacturing steel.

Acoustic Wave Devices Using Plate Modes With Surface-Parallel Displacement, S. J. Martin and A. J. Ricco; Pat. No. 5,117,146; Issued: 5/26/92.

Electrically-Programmable Diffraction Grating, A. J. Ricco, M. A. Butler, M. B. Sinclair, S. D. Senturia; U.S. Patent No. 5,757,536; Issued 5/26/98.

"System and method for generating cyclic codes for error control in digital communications", US Patent 7,539,918, Issued May 26, 2009


Knowledge History of the Day - Index for the Year

Management Theory Review Blog
Management Knowledge Center
Engineering and Technology Knowledge Center
Science Knowledge Center
Social Science Knowledge Center

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling, Harold Kerzner, 11th Edition - Book Information

The book described as the best selling bible of project management

Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling, 11th Edition
February 2013

Wiley

Table of Contents

Preface xxi
1 OVERVIEW 1

2 PROJECT MANAGEMENT GROWTH: CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS 37

3 ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES 91

4 ORGANIZING AND STAFFING THE PROJECT OFFICE AND TEAM 141

5 MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS 191

6 MANAGEMENT OF 'YOUR' TIME AND STRESS 285

7 CONFLICTS 295

8 SPECIAL TOPICS 319

9 THE VARIABLES FOR SUCCESS 365

10 WORKING WITH EXECUTIVES 383

11 PLANNING 411

12 NETWORK SCHEDULING TECHNIQUES 493

13 PROJECT GRAPHICS 555

14 PRICING AND ESTIMATING 571

15 COST CONTROL 629

16 TRADE-OFF ANALYSIS IN A PROJECT ENVIRONMENT 715

17 RISK MANAGEMENT 741

18 LEARNING CURVES 817

19 CONTRACT MANAGEMENT 839

20 QUALITY MANAGEMENT 873

21 MODERN DEVELOPMENTS PROJECT MANAGEMENT 927

22 THE BUSINESS OF SCOPE CHANGES 949

23 THE 'PROJECT' OFFICE 955

24 MANAGING CRISIS PROJECTS 971

25 THE RISE, FALL, AND RESURRECTION OF IRIDIUM: A PROJECT MANAGEMENT PERSPECTIVE 987

Appendix A. Solutions to the Project Management Conflict Exercise 1025

Appendix B. Solution to Leadership Exercise 1031

Appendix C. Dorale Products Case Studies 1037

Appendix D. Solution to the Dorale Products Case Studies Answers 1049

Appendix E. Crosslisting of PMBOK to the Text 1055

Author Index 1061

Subject Index



Related blog by Kerzner

http://drharoldkerzner.wordpress.com/page/5/

11th Edition Google Book Link with preview facility
http://books.google.co.in/books?id=QgQQC5qRtzgC

10th Edition Google Book Link with preview facility
http://books.google.co.in/books?id=Ka9K-61xXssC

Download Chapter 1 from Wiley
http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/70/11180222/1118022270-41.pdf


Friday, May 24, 2013

Knowledge History - Science, Engineering and Management





Resources

Science


Chronology of History of Science  http://www.thesciencebookstore.com/chron.asp?pg=1
Calendar of science for for the month http://www.pacificsciencecenter.org/calendar-of-science.html

Computation Knowledge - Historical timeline - http://www.wolframalpha.com/docs/timeline/
Lasers - History  http://www.worldoflasers.com/laserhistory.htm
Mechanical Engineering - ASME History of Mechanical Engineering Page
http://www.asme.org/kb/topics/history-of-mechanical-engineering

Engineering

Patents Information Datewise
http://www.datamp.org/displayIndex.php?start=0


Great Achievements in Engineering  http://www.greatachievements.org/default.aspx?id=2984
History of Engineering - Bibliography http://www.creatingtechnology.org/history.htm
International Journal for the History of Engineering and Technology
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/maney/het
A Biographical Dictionary of People in Engineering - From Earliest Records until 2000.
http://books.google.co.in/books?id=l2492-xSSNoC
Inventions - Timeline


Automobile Engineering

Automobile engineering timeline - http://www.greatachievements.org/?id=3880
Electric Car - Timeline  - http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/223/electric-car-timeline.html
Timeline of Motoring History - http://www.auto-history.tv/Timeline_of_motoring_history.html

Civil Engineering - History and Heritage - http://live.asce.org/hh/index.mxml?versionChecked=true

Concrete - Historical Timeline - http://www.auburn.edu/academic/architecture/bsc/classes/bsc314/timeline/timeline.htm

IEEE Technology History - http://theinstitute.ieee.org/technology-focus/technology-history?offset=40

Mechanical Engineering - ASME History of Mechanical Engineering Page
http://www.asme.org/kb/topics/history-of-mechanical-engineering


Robotics History - Timeline http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/sciencefacts/technology/historyofrobotics.html

Structural Engineering - History Resources - http://www.thestructuralengineer.info/?option=com_content&view=frontpage&Itemid=32

Weapons Technology  History - http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17423-timeline-weapons-technology.html

A Timeline of Database History  http://quickbase.intuit.com/articles/timeline-of-database-history/


History of Genetic Engineering
___________

___________




Management


Industrial Engineering Timeline: http://mailab.snu.ac.kr/erp/ver3/erp/ie_timeline.html
Industrial Engineering is Human Effort Engineering and System Efficiency Engineering.

Management History Timeline:  http://demos.projectphoenix.com/mcgraw-hill/ManagementHistoryTimeline/#


Month-wise and Date-Wise Events

January    -   February    -      March      -   April     -    May      -      June

July               August              September    October     November    December


A History of Knowledge - Long Essay
http://www.scaruffi.com/know/history.html




Saturday, May 18, 2013

Edward de Bono - Creativity and Lateral Thinking




Edward de Bono made many contributions to the topic of creative thinking.

Presentation by de Bono on Thinking
_____________

_____________


http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2008/05/if-you-are-not.html

If you are not aware of the psychologist and physician Dr. Edward de Bono, then you owe it to yourself to at least explore his contributions.


Friday, May 17, 2013

Confucius on Leadership by John Adair - Book Review and Summary



John Adair's book Confucius on Leadership was published in 2013.

While Confucius is known to many as a philosopher and Confucianism is even treated as a religion, Adair, a scholar on leadership identified that Confucius tried to develop leadership among the Chinese and made efforts in that direction.

Confucius on Leadership - Google Book with preview facility

http://books.google.co.in/books?id=507aEoXuxg8C

Part 1 The Generic Role of Leader

1. What is leadership?
2. Leading from in front
3. Achieving the task
4. Building the team
5. Developing the individual

Part 2 Some Qualities Necessary in Leaders

6. Enthusiasm
7. Integrity
8. Tough and demanding but fair
9. Warmth
10. Humility

Conclusion: The path to leadership

 A Biographical Sketch of Confucius



More reading on Confucius on Leadership

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/features/corporate-dossier/confucius-theories-on-leadership-as-relevant-today-as-they-were-2500-years-ago-john-adair/articleshow/20088112.cms

The Relevance of Confucian Philosophy to Modern Concepts of Leadership and Followership
http://digitalcommons.unf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=ojii_volumes

There are more articles on Confucius on Leadership. More will be added.


Monday, May 13, 2013

"Outside-in" Thinking - Prof. Ranjay Gulati


Ranjay Gulati is the Jaime and Josefina Chua Tiampo Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.


Companies with an outside-in perspective aim to provide solutions for customers. Those with an inside-out orientation, on the other hand, just focus on products, sales, and the organization.

Customer-centric companies tracked by Gulati between 2001 and 2007 delivered shareholder returns of 150 percent while the S&P 500 delivered 14 percent.

To develop an outside-in orientation, it is essential to translate awareness of a customer issue or problem into action toward solving it and provide the solution to the customer.

Ranjay Gulati:  "I naively assumed that all firms must indeed have an outside-in orientation whereby they put their customers first in all their decisions and actions." After all, that is what business is about and marketing texts and courses promoted it .  But Gulati says "Much to my surprise, I found that this was the exception rather than the rule for most businesses."

More Reading on the Concept and Ranjay Gulati

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6201.html

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-03-02/news/31116805_1_new-guru-customer-gulati

http://www.h-ym.com/articles/Inside%20Outside-In%20WP.pdf

http://blogs.hbr.org/hbsfaculty/2010/04/inside-best-buys-customer-cent.html

Silobusting - Ranjay Gulati
http://hbr.org/2007/05/silo-busting-how-to-execute-on-the-promise-of-customer-focus/ar/1

"From Inside-out to Outside in thinking" by Ranjay Gulati, HBS professor in Economic Times Corporate Dossier of 10 May 2013

Video
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/video-high-growth-requires-customer-first-thinking/article549998/

Transcript of the video
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/transcript-high-growth-requires-customer-first-thinking/article4171789/