Clayton Christensen: "Where does Growth come from?" | Talks at Google

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1. These "Talks at Google" are making a big impact on my life. Now I have to read all his books!
2. A theory is a set of principles or axioms we use to understand or predict behavior.
   Some of these axioms are known to be incomplete.
3. Great talk! Thanks for sharing!
4. It was worth my time - every minute of it, but the last 4 minutes are transformational – thank you
5. what an idiot
6. Profesor Christensen is like the economics profesor in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", he could probably learn a lesson on monotonic speech, however this talk is brilliant.
7. It's a theory about competitive response. In some instances, it takes the form of the competition not caring and hence not responding until it's way too late. In other instances, like in the Uber example, it is laws and infrastructure that keep the big guys from being able to respond in time.
   
   In the Tesla example, the job that needed to be done at first was that some of the hippies got rich and needed a way to show how much they loved the trees. The more expensive and impressive, the better. Tesla was competing against non-consumption in that way. Their reputation is what has enabled them to be successful up until now. But, even though the competition may have been skeptical at first, they are now jealous of the attention and actually doing something to move into that market, and Tesla has some great risk ahead of it.
   
   But how fast will their response be? The infrastructure and research is difficult to catch up with, so Tesla might survive after all. Will the other car companies build their own Gigafactories? I don't think Tesla will sell batteries to them, because they can't even meet their own demand yet.
   
   The basic principle is that startups need to build momentum in order to survive. If they have enough momentum, it will carry them into new markets and clear anything out of their path, including the monolithic establishments. In order to build momentum, they need room first.
   
   So the time that a startup has to obtain critical mass or escape velocity would be something like
   T_C < T_A + T_J
   T_A is the time it takes for the establishment to become aware that they are threatened
   T_J is the time it takes for them to adjust their infrastructure to be able to handle the threat
   
   Critical velocity is achieved when the startup is growing too fast for the future iterations of T_A and T_J to ever be lower again.
   
   That's the basic principle, I think. These are pretty loose terms, but this is how I think about it. The real value I have gained from the "Innovator's Dilemma" is the idea that the time it takes for big companies to become aware of a threat can be surprisingly long. The more timid people are, the more they depend on metrics and short-term assurances. When an entity only has things to lose, they develop a certain fear that can lead them to overvalue guaranteed, short-term success.
   
   There are some industries that attract disruption more than others because T_A and T_J are so high. Education is one of them. Space is another. The car industry. Banks. Basically, every entrenched institution that tends to attract insecure people who crave guaranteed outcomes. Those are, ironically, the industries that are at the highest risk of being disrupted.
   
   But some of them are protected by the general population. The consumers have to believe that the product that the establishment offers isn't made of magic. With space, it took some time for people to believe that a private company could do a good job. With electric cars, people believe(d) that gasoline cars are the sacred way of moving, and nothing could ever be better. With education, people's superstitions are obvious.
   
   These can be factored into some kind of relation that gives the expected amount of time for an industry to be disrupted, but it's a little complicated and I don't have the time to figure that out right now. It would be interesting, though.
   
   When all is said and done, I think that the way Elon Musk has gone about it might end up being studied in textbooks. He managed to stay under the radar for a few years before the auto industry started to actually take him seriously. What's the difference between that and going after the rebar? The number of cars he has produced before being taken seriously has been significant. We will see if it is enough to let Tesla scale up and beat the rest of the auto industry before they get there in time to stop it.
8. Growth comes from white people, not from Asian looters.
9. 14:30 "There's gotta be a job out there for which they hire a milkshake to solve, and we need to understand what the job is."
   
   Woah.
10. One of the most insightful yet humble speakers I've seen in a long time.
11. Interesting thought process.
12. Hey guys I am reaching for 30 subs by 12:00 pm tomorrow! If you wouldn't mind why not help! Thx
13. Super interesting. Added some books to the to-read shelves :)
14. Great talk, now at 46:08 he says that companies can survive disruption by setting up independent divisions with new processes for producing new, potentially disrupting products. Interesting if Google has set up Alphabet Inc. based on this advice, or was that earlier ? Is Alphabet now seen as a successful initiative, or is it too early to judge ?
15. Shhhhlooooooowwwww
16. very inspiring!
17. Contribution mom consumer apmigd stock.
18. The talk reminds me of the importance of long term thinking. However, immensely successful disruptors can give the wrong impression about the realities of changing course. For the most part, the companies and individuals that stick to their knitting, and adapt over time, are the ones who are successful.
19. Hats off to u sir.... U sir are inspirational
20. How to differentiate between non consumption vs low consumption?