Clayton M. Christensen
Good management can actually cause great companies to fail. By listening to their best customers and focusing on high profit margins, industry leaders often miss the quiet threat of disruptive innovations.
Sustaining innovations improve existing products for mainstream customers, while disruptive innovations create new markets or offer cheaper, simpler alternatives.
Leading companies fail to adopt disruptive technologies because their resource allocation processes are heavily influenced by the demands of their most profitable clients.
Established managers often experience an endowment effect that makes them view unproven, lower-margin technologies as a threat to their current success.