Harvard Business School has profiled me as one of 12 students of their first HBX Course on Disruptive Strategy. I feel very honoured, grateful and proud. Link: http://www.abouthbx.com/student-profiles/marcin
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Why did you decide to take Disruptive Strategy? I took the Disruptive Strategy course to learn the frameworks behind the Innovation and Disruptive Strategy theories of Professor Christensen. I believed it would help me to better discover and deploy strategies and build go-to-market plans for my division more effectively.
What did you find most insightful about the course? Looking at the market with "jobs to be done" (JTBD) lens has been an incredible insight for me. Before, I looked at the market with a "customer lens," however JTBD reasonates more with me and is in line with Henry Ford's famous quote, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." Three types of disruptive innvoation (sustaining, low-end, and new-market) have helped me to look at the competitive marketplace more holistically. The theories of emergent and deliberate strategies gave me the tools to fend off the threats and make sure we capitalize on the right opportunities. Understanding resources, processes, and profit formula - I not only learned what an organization can do - but also what it cannot do.
How do you plan to apply what you've learned in Disruptive Strategy to your career? First, I will focus on discovering the real "job to be done." Only then I will create a value proposition and go-to-market plan. The frameworks learned and practiced will also help me to balance between deliberate and emergent strategies. Moreover, I understand that the organization cannot disrupt itself. Therefore, I will pay special attention to creating separate business units where applicable - with new resources, processes, and profit formulas. This already helped me with planning how to integrate one of the companies we recently bought which has a different culture and premium services to offer. Instead of cannibalizing, I’ll try to maximize the benefits it can bring under the wider company umbrella. The theory will also help me to monitor the competitive landscape of our industry with a special focus on commoditization and modularity. As a result, I will be on the lookout for new entrants with disruptive strategies (low-end and new-market) and also review the strategy to assess whether we need to dis-integrate and become more specialized. Overall, an excellent course: world-class content, perfect delivery, excellent and diverse cohort, and finally wonderful collaboration with both the organizers and the class. Strongly recommended.