ABSTRACT
Christensen (1997) has used the phrase ‘sustained innovation’ to describe how most large corporations focus their R&D efforts on introducing incremental improvements in existing products or organizational processes. The potential problem with this managerial philosophy is that the future performance of firms using this strategy is highly vulnerable to a new player entering the market offering a significantly different product or organizational process. An example of this latter proposition is Amazon’s creation of a new online distribution channel into book retailing.
