This was an interesting book and it was written in such a way that the conclusions were almost too obvioius. The author described two basic problems that he observed in a number of industries and successful companies. Successful companies pay attention to their customers, have a number of continuous improvement efforts and run their businesses in order to make as much money as possible. When new technologies arrive, these businesses evaluate them and incorporate them into their products if they are appropriate to their business strategy. The vast majority of improvements fit the "sustaining technology" framework.

It is when the new technology is disruptive that there are problems. Disruptive technologies have a number of characteristics, but the main feature is that the new technology has advantages that cannot be measured by the current metrics. The hard drive industry went from measuring areal storage capacity to volume of the unit to power consumption. Each of these changes displaced manufacturers, who were not thinking about selling those aspects of their products. The same effect is shown in a number of industries.

The other aspect of this is that the new technologies are in markets that are not profitable to the large, established companies for a number of reasons: low margins, unknown market, cannabillize sales. Or the profits of the new technology are "not enough" for the large companies with larger overhead. The obvious solution at this point is that the established companies should form a new company or new division that is separate from the rest of the organization to focus on the new technology. The best example of this is the IBM PC development house in Florida.

Another feature of how companies behave is that they tend to move into markets with higher margins so they can make more profits on their products. As this happens, they are more than willing to give away their "lower profit" centers in markets with lower margins. This is fine until there are no more markets to move into, and the companies that have moved into the lower markets establish themselves and develop their technology to the point that it fits in the higher markets.

On the technology end, the author noted that technology generally progresses faster than the needs of customers. This allows the behavior noted above. It also creates situations where new products become commodities over time as their features extend beyond what the customer base needs and the customers begin to make purchase decisions on things like reliability and eventually price.