The last couple of years haven’t been kind to former disruptive poster-child Sony. Yet the company has taken a series of actions that could position it to return to disruptive prominence.
What has Sony done? Is the company about to introduce new products or services that could be the building blocks of billion-dollar businesses? Not exactly. Sony has done something more prosaic—it got its core businesses under control.
It’s odd to suggest that this has anything to do with innovation, but in fact it's a vital part of the process. As we discuss in the first chapter of our new book The Innovator’s Guide to Growth, a core business that is in control is one of several necessary precursors to innovation.
Why? Well, when your core business isn’t in control, unexpected crises inevitably pop up. When those crises hit, managers necessarily and appropriately divert attention from growth initiatives toward making sure that the core business doesn’t go down the tubes.
That's what happened to Sony. From the mid 1950s to the early 1980s, Sony was an unstoppable innovation machine. It systematically launched about a dozen disruptive product lines, including the transistor radio and the Walkman.
But since the 80s, Sony’s innovation engine has suffered a long, gentle decline. It introduced innovative products like its Vaio line of notebook computers and its PlayStation line of video game consoles, but it rarely pioneered new markets.
Read the rest at Scott's Harvard Management blog.