Big Bang Disruption:Strategy in the Age of Devastating Innovation

It used to take years or even decades for disruptive innovations to dethrone dominant products and services.  But now any business can be devastated virtually overnight by something better and cheaper.  Software-based products are replacing physical goods.  And every service provider must compete with cloud-based tools that offer customers a better way to interact. 

Today, start-ups with minimal experience and no capital can unravel your strategy before you even begin to grasp what’s happening.  Never mind the “innovator’s dilemma” -- this is the innovator’s disaster.  And it’s happening in nearly every industry. 

The good news is that any business can master the strategy of the start-ups.  In our summary of Big Bang Disruption:  Strategy in the Age of Devastating Innovation, Larry Downes and Paul Nunes identify four key stages of the new innovation life cycle, helping you spot potential disruptors in time.  And they offer twelve rules for defending your markets, launching disruptors of your own, and getting out while there’s still time. 

Downes is an Internet industry analyst and author of Unleashing the Killer App, one of the biggest business best-sellers of the early 2000s.  Nunes is the Global Managing Director of Research at the Accenture Institute for High Performance and the author of Jumping the S-Curve.

Based on extensive research and in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs, investors, and executives from more than 30 industries, this summary will arm you with strategies and insights to thrive in this brave new world.