Hi, everyone. Welcome to the A6 and Z podcast. I'm Sonal. This weekend's special episode features Mark

Anderson in conversation with Clayton Christensen, father of disruption theory, professor at Harvard Business School, and author of several books, including his most recent competing against luck.

The conversation took place at our inaugural A6NZ summit, is moderated by longtime tech writer and editor-in-chief of Backchannel,

Stephen Levy, and covers everything from management to product to modularity.

But they began with Clay's book, The Innovators Dilemma,

which popularized the theory of disruptive innovation,

and actually turned 20 years old this year.

I'm wondering, have your views changed about how

companies get disrupted, how big companies can't stay off innovation? What's, a lot's happened in

20 years, especially in the technology realm. What's different? And have you adjusted your thoughts? It's changed a lot. I think the

most important thing I've learned is I learned a bit about what is a theory and how is it developed.

So theories, when they emerged from the researchers' minds, never did they emerge perfect. They were always

just kind of half-baked. And what success was predicated upon is subsequent researchers had to find

things in the world that the theory could not explain.

And if you can find an anomaly that your theory can't explain,

it gives you the opportunity to improve the theory.

And so that's what happened to us over the last 20 years.

What were some of the big anomalies that caused you to adjust the theory?

Well, one of them is, you know, the diagram of disruption where there are two trajectories.

One is the trajectory of improvement that customers can use.

Right.

And another is a trajectory of improvement that innovating companies provide.

...