THE INNOVATOR'S GUIDE TO GROWTH: Putting Disruptive Innovation to Work
The Innovator's Guide to Growth bookcover

MORE THAN A DECADE AGO, Clayton Christensen's breakthrough book The Innovator's Dilemma illustrated how disruptive innovations drive industry transformation and market creation. In The Innovator's Guide to Growth, Scott Anthony, Mark Johnson, Joseph Sinfield, and Elizabeth Altman take the subject to the next level: implementation. The authors explain how to create this crucial capability for unlocking disruption's tranformational power. More

“Developing successful products is an art and a science. The Innovator’s Guide to Growth provides practical guidance for companies seeking to bring their expertise and experience together in an efficient way to better design and develop breakthrough products.”
– Dondeena Bradley, Vice President, Nutrition, PepsiCo.

“Innovation for growth is a road map that business needs to meet today’s global challenges. This book is a great guide to making it happen. A must-read.”
– Arkadi Kuhlmann, CEO, ING Direct

 

Scott D. Anthony's latest blog posts

 

Google Chrome's Disruptive Shine

Posted by Scott Anthony on September 3, 2008

 

It didn't take long for the hype machine to gear up. Seemingly minutes after news began to appear about Google's new Web browser (called "Chrome"), pundits started talking about "browser wars" and Google's "Microsoft killer." In this case, the hype might be justified, if Chrome delivers on its disruptive potential. 

Early descriptions sound ominous for Microsoft. Google's browser was build from the ground up to make it easier and faster to run Web-based applications. It is completely open source, meaning developers can modify the source code and easily design applications that work with the browser. Of course, it is free.

Google hopes the browser will lead more people to spend more time using its applications, browsing the Internet, and contributing to its advertising revenue. Further, it hopes to lessen the chances that Microsoft uses its browser dominance to subtly push people towards its own Web sites and applications.

Chrome presents an obvious threat to Microsoft's Internet Explorer software. But Chrome could do much more. If it works as advertised, Chrome could allow consumers to eschew Microsoft's operating system and applications. Instead, Chrome, Google applications, and other third-party open source add-ons could function as a viable--and free--replacement to the core building blocks of Microsoft's business.

Early reviews suggest that Chrome has some real benefits, but doesn't quite deliver on its promised speed and is missing some features that demanding browser customers take for granted. As Wall Street Journal reviewer Walter Mossberg noted, "Chrome is a smart, innovative browser that, in many common scenarios, will make using the Web faster, easier and less frustrating. But this first version--which is just a beta, or test, release--is rough around the edges and lacks some common browser features Google plans to add later."

The general approach sounds right out of the disruptive playbook. Sacrifice some features in the name of speed, flexibility, and price. Use a business model that looks unattractive to the market leader. Reap the rewards.

Of course, it is far too early to make definitive proclamations about Chrome. The most critical question from a disruptive perspective is the degree to which Google is able to obtain differentiated performance by integrating together its applications and its browser. If one plus one really equals something that is meaningfully more than two, Microsoft will struggle to match Google's performance, let alone deal with the ramifications of a disruptive business model.

However, if that integration does not confer any particular advantage, Microsoft is likely to do a "good enough" job of rolling Chrome's basic features into Internet Explorer, blunting the impact of Google's move.

Microsoft used the power of integration to famously crush Netscape in the browser wars in the mid 1990s. Today the company controls more than 70 percent of the browser market, and of course maintains a dominant position in the operating system and productivity applications market.

Early signs suggest that this story might play out in a different way, if Google can deliver the disruptive goods by turning the integration tables on Microsoft.

—Scott Anthony

Scott's blog on Harvard Business Publishing Online.