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In part 3 of my interview with Mark Johnson, co-author of The Innovator’s Guide to Growth, I ask him about the common misconceptions of disruptive innovation and particularly the way people confuse disruptive innovation with novel or radical technology.

In this segment I ask Mark about the most important things that they have learned that are essential to successful disruptive innovation projects.

As promised, here is the first snippet of my interview of Mark Johnson, co-author of The Innovator’s Guide To Growth. Here he discusses briefly what led to the book, and what it is really for. Please to enjoy…

I had the great pleasure of sitting down with my good friend (and all-around good egg) Mark Johnson last week to talk about his new book : The Innovator’s Guide To Growth: Putting Disruptive Innovation To Work (Harvard Business Press; with co-authors Scott Anthony, Joseph Sinfield, and Elizabeth Altman). I really wanted to speak to him about it because I feel that this is a very valuable book. I caught a lot of my conversation with Mark on video, and will be cutting it up and putting bits here over the next while because I thought a lot of it is really terrific and useful. But first, about the book…

I didn’t exactly know what to expect with this book. I know that I was hoping for a very practical “work book” kind of thing, with specific steps that real companies could take. I also wanted something that a person could start using on their own and then expand into their team or organization. I know that there is a real need for something that could be of value to people at different levels of organizations, and even to different kinds of organizations.

Now I am fully aware that this is a very tall order, and normally such high expectations inevitably lead to disappointment (Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace comes to mind). But I know that Mark and his co-authors know more than probably anybody in the world about how you actually make disruptive innovation work in real-world organizations. So if anyone could really nail it - they could. All of which explains why I began reading this book with an unsettling combination of eager anticipation laced with an ‘expect to be disappointed’ kind of feeling.

It is fair to say that the challenge the authors faced in writing this book was significant. They set out to make disruptive innovation practical. Their objective was to provide something that companies could actually act on. In my mind, there are a number of obstacles that must be overcome to achieve that, but perhaps the greatest is simply making sure that the reader really understands what disruptive innovation is (and isn’t).

I am convinced that Christensen’s ideas of disruptive innovation, while well known, are not widely understood. Part of the difficulty just lies in the words themselves, which I feel have taken on a kind of chameleon-like ability to mean a lot of different things to different people. I have noticed that when you say “disruptive innovation” what a lot of people are really hearing is “radical technological breakthrough”, or “superior technology”, or “direct competitive assault”. While any of these may be true in some cases of disruptive innovation, they are neither necessary nor sufficient. Of course, the best examples of disruptive innovation are none of these things (think: rebar and steel mini-mills).

The authors therefore, attempt to weave the basic concepts of disruptive innovation into the fabric of the book. They are helped-along by a foreword written by Clayton Christensen himself, and their own introduction to the book, which together attempt to be a kind of disruptive innovation refresher. I actually found them to be excellent in how crisply they define the domain. However, I am not sure if, on their own, they are enough for someone that has not been exposed to the ideas of disruptive innovation through Christensen’s other books. On the other hand, if you have time for only one book on the subject, I will argue that it must be this one. The reason is that this book goes the furthest in taking disruptive innovation theory and showing how it can be put into practice.

A common complaint that I have heard about Christensen’s books on disruptive innovation is that they are somewhat academic and theoretical. To be fair, he is an academic and theoretician after all. But he is also very interested in making things work in reality, as evidenced by his work with Innosight and also by his support of this book. What makes me so excited about this book is that it really delivers on the need for an eminently practical guide to the things that every company can do to leverage disruptive innovation. The work is based on the authors’ own experience in trying to implement disruptive concepts in dozens of organizations over the past decade.

Mark co-founded Innosight eight years ago with Clayton Christensen as a way to help companies apply the principles and insights that Christensen’s research had produced and which many had read about in his books including The Innovator’s Dilemma and The Innovator’s Solution. This book is exactly the kind of volume of accumulated learnings that I have been craving.

At its core, it is a methodology for embedding disruptive innovation principles in the culture and activities of an organization. It is broken-down into four parts that take the reader through the process. It is filled with actual examples and case studies of each step and principle with companies and products that are familiar to the reader including: iTunes, Swiffer, Wii, Skype, YouTube, Google Adwords, Metro newspapers, Whitestrips, eBay, and more. These cases were probably the most satisfying part for me, and I would recommend the book for these if nothing else.

Fortunately, there is a lot more on the menu. The book is very readable, moves quickly, and doesn’t ever get bogged-down in theoretical or vague “management speak”. In fact, it is a lot like a workbook and includes a variety of templates and forms that you can copy and use right away to organize your thinking. I found these to be extremely valuable as they provide simple frameworks that allow you to translate what you are learning directly on to your own business model and situation.

In short, I was very satisfied with the book, and am recommending it to everyone. I think this is absolutely the best business book of 2008. And, for what it’s worth, I am currently starting my second read-through as I am anxious to begin following the exercises in the book in detail with my own company. Please add your comments and let me know what you think of the book. I will also be posting some videos of the interesting bits of my interview with Mark Johnson here on the blog so check back often!

Ever since Google released its new browser, “Chrome” last week, it has been the subject of hot debate. People are arguing whether the world needs another browser, whether this new browser is any good, and whether or not this is really innovation. A very interesting post by Scott Anthony on his blog takes the position that Chrome shows signs of classic disruption: easier and faster to run web apps, open source, and free. Anthony makes the argument that Chrome is a disruptive threat not just to Microsoft’s now-dominant browser, Internet Explorer, but even to Microsoft’s other flaghsip products - Office and Windows.

This is much more serious statement than many realize. For some time a lot of people have been predicting that the web browser will supplant the traditional Operating System as the layer for which most applications will ultimately be designed. We now see that this vision has the very real potential of becoming reality. Companies such as Salesforce.com and many others have shown that industrial-strength applications can run in web browsers, and Google’s own applications which compete with Microsoft’s Office suite offer a tantalizing taste of what is to come.

But the browser itself has long been the limiting factor. Among the biggest problems with the current crop of browsers are their poor memory and process management. Sophisticated web apps can choke a browser, and the problems get worse when there are multiple windows and tabs open. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer which is used by 70% of the market has been particularly slow to evolve in this dimension and seems to have been spurred-on mostly by the competition - particularly Firefox. There is little doubt that IE wouldn’t have moved very far without the Firefox threat looming.

I think a lot of people have missed the point with Chrome. Google doesn’t really want to compete in the browser market. I believe that their intention is to move browser technology in the direction it wants to go - toward making browsers a more robust application platform. This is the reason that I would argue Chrome will ultimately turn out to be disruptive even if it never consolidates any substantial market share. Many have argued that Chrome’s new features will not be difficult for the market leaders such as IE and Firefox to adopt and that will obviate any demand for Chrome. I think that this is exactly what Google wants. They are lighting a fire under the IE development team. They may or may not want to be the new king of the browser hill - but they certainly want browsers to be capable of delivering the new generation of applications and services that they envision.

That’s why Chrome is not as disruptive of other browsers as it is of traditional software applications like Office and operating systems such as Windows and Macintosh OSX. When the browser becomes the platform of choice for application delivery, we will be able to get our software over the web, and the operating system I use (currently: Macintosh OSX by the way), will recede into the background. In fact, if I am getting my apps over the web, why should I pay a premium for a commercial OS at all when there are free alternatives that support a modern browser just fine. Chrome is disruptive without specifically needing to disrupt any particular product directly. This is because it is going to change the balance of power between traditional computing platforms and the web-based computing juggernaut on the horizon. I think Chrome will prove disruptive whether anyone uses it or not.