Seeing Whats Next: Using Theories
of Innovation to Predict Industry
Change by Scott D. Anthony
Michael Porter Of Innovation
A Framework for Predicting Industry Winners and Losers Every day,
individuals take action based on how they believe innovation will change
industries. Yet these beliefs are largely based on guesswork and
incomplete data, and lead to costly errors in judgment. Now,
internationally renowned innovation expert Clayton M. Christensen and his
research partners Scott D. Anthony and Erik A. Roth present a
groundbreaking framework for predicting outcomes in the evolution of any
industry. Based on proven theories outlined in Christensens landmark
books The Innovators Dilemma and The Innovators Solution, Seeing
Whats Next offers a practical, three-part model that helps decision-makers
spot the signals of industry change, determine the outcome of competitive
battles, and assess whether a firms actions will ensure or threaten future
success. Through in-depth case studies of industries from aviation to

health care, the authors illustrate the predictive power of innovation theory
in action. A unique, outside-in perspective on industry change, Seeing
Whats Next will help executives, analysts, and investors develop
invaluable intuition into the future that matters to them.
Personal Review: Seeing Whats Next: Using Theories of
Innovation to Predict Industry Change by Scott D. Anthony
The primary author's first two books were each sensational in their own
way--.I was particularly gripped by his description of the throw-away
camara as being unattractive to the high-end camara shops, but when
adopted by grocery stores, led to the 90% of the non-consumers of high-
end camaras getting into photography. The key: low-cost offering for the
non-consumers introduced outside the incumbent arena.
That is the heart of this new book, and the addition of two co-authors
suggest that the author's vision is spreading.
I actually read the two chapters on education and health care first--the first
because my oldest son blew off his senior year in high school at not worthy
of his time, and is now racking up community college credits at very low
cost (with the same instructors from the higher cost Geroge Mason
University) and is a living embodiment of the education chapters first focus:
what matters is not credentialling from the higher end universities, but the
low cost acquisition of "just enough just right" learning from key teachers
(the brand is shifting from schools to teachers).
Both the education and the health chapters drive home three big points
that I find compelling and exciting in the context of C. K. Prahalad's The
Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits
(Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks):
1. The innovation and profit opportunities are with the non-consumers--the
ultimate non-0consumers today are the five billion poor, and especially the
1.5 billion each in China and in India, two countries that have the capability
to create call centers for "just enough just in time" learning via cell phone.
2. The keys to health innovation, both in the developed world of one
billioin rich and in the undeveloped world of the five billion poor, are:
a. Creating "good enough" solutions that are very low cost and easy to
push into remote areas that could not afford high end care; and
b. Pushing innovation down the pyramid from the expensive sites and
specialists to the nurse-practitioners and ultimately to the patient
themselves; while also moving the diagnostics and the remedies down to
the point of care and aware from the hospital "hubs" that are now as
antiquated as the airline "hubs" that block point to point travel.

Chapter Ten on "The Future of Telecommunications gave me goose-
bumps. No kidding. Thunderclaps and blinding lighting accompanied the
third page of this chapter, in part because I have been thinking about Open
Spectrum (see David Weinberger's brilliant chapter on this, free online, and
also his new book, a sensational new book, Everything Is Miscellaneous:
The Power of the New Digital Disorder. Althought the chapter focuses
priimarily on wireless versus hardline hardware options, and does not
mention either the obvious fact that satellites still have too much delay for
ubiquitous wireless from outer space (something that should go away in
ten years with higher energy pulses), or the other obvious fact, that even
wireless is being commoditized and that on demand services and sense-
making are the next big offering from the innovators, I found this chapter
compelling. Arthur Clarke said long ago that telecommunications should
be more or less free as an enabler, and I agree. We need to make both
communications and education free to all, and monetize the transactions,
the patterns, the early warning, and the aggregate sense-making.
The next most important chapter for me was Chapter 3, "Strategic
Choices: Identifying Which Choices Matter." What stuck with me are three
things:
1. Start early--don't wait for everyone else to realize the need
2. Hire accordingly. This is HUGE. Most companies have a profile for
new employees that is 20 years out of date. Most companies have no clue
that Digital Natives are completely different from Digital Immigrants (as one
author notes: this is the first generation where the kids are not little version
of us--they are a metaphysical transformation well beyond us and anything
we can comprehend). Hence, companies have to have the leadership
needed to create a "safe" skunkworks where iconoclasts and others who
are largely antithetical to the gerbils and drones hired in the past, can
innovate without having to deal with the insecurities, ignorance, bad habits,
and "rankism" of those trapped in the pyramidal paradigms of the past.
The Appendix provides a summary of key concepts and has some really
excellent illustrations that are very helpful. The point within the Appendex
that escaped me earlier in the book and was driven home here is that
ultimately the innovative firms make investments as a means of learning,
not as a means of realizing their pre-conceived notions of what is needed
next. I continue to recommend the Business Week cover story of 20 June
2005, "The Power of Us." Innovation, it appears to me, works best when
firms both hire and invest to learn, *and* dramatically and deliberately
expand the stakeholder circle to embrace the end-user being sought as a
customer.
The rest of the book is very worthwhile for those that do not read broadly in
the business or innovation leadership.
Other books that I have found as exciting at this one:

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
Mobilizing Generation 2.0: A Practical Guide to Using Web2.0
Technologies to Recruit, Organize and Engage Youth
The Change Handbook: The Definitive Resource on Today's Best Methods
for Engaging Whole Systems
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the
People
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New
Ideas, Updated Edition
The leadership of civilization building: Administrative and civilization
theory, symbolic dialogue, and citizen skills for the 21st century
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and
Freedom
Finally, a book I published with 55 contributors, free online but utterly
wonderful in hard-copy from Amazon:
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace
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