Working sessions with Clay Christensen | On business model innovation — one reason it’s hard

Clay has been studying business models for a long time, having written about them most recently in Harvard Business Review in 2008 and studying the nuances of industries such as healthcare in books such as The Innovator’s Prescription.

For the last two years, senior researcher Tom Bartman has been working with Clay to understand why — despite all the literature that is out there on how to innovate your business model — companies still struggle to find success in innovating their business models.

In this short video, Clay responds to an early draft of Tom’s findings, and reminds us to think about what Edgar Schein would say about the role of culture in developing — and ultimately replacing — the processes of an organization, a critical piece to changing any part of a company’s business model.

If you have been part of an organization that has effectively changed its processes, we’d love to hear how culture, as defined by Professor Schein, played a role in that.