In this classic bestseller--one of the most influential business books of all time--innovation expert Clayton Christensen shows how even the most outstanding companies can do everything right--yet still lose market leadership. Christensen explains why most companies miss out on new waves of innovation. No matter the industry, he says, a successful company with established products will get pushed aside unless managers know how and when to abandon traditional business practices. Offering both successes and failures from leading companies as a guide, The Innovator's Dilemma gives you a set of rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation. Part One--comprising chapters 1 through 4--builds a framework that explains why sound decisions by great managers can lead firms to failure. Chapters 1 and 2 recount in quite a bit of detail the history of the disk drive industry, where the saga of "good-companies-hitting-hard-times" has been played out multiple times. In just a few years, market segments, companies, and technologies emerged, matured, and declined. This repetitive pattern of failure in the disk drive industry begins to show the framework that explains why the best and largest firms in the early years of the industry failed.