Strategy is not a static thing; what works in one context may fail in another. Likewise, the strategy that senior management intends to employ may diverge from the one that actually emerges.

Over time, as users desired to make purchases on the site, an “emergent strategy” surfaced, and buyable pins became an attractive new opportunity.

By staying open to this new opportunity, Pinterest was able to shift resources accordingly and capture this rapidly evolving new opportunity.

Now, as they’ve expanded farther into the buyable pins strategy, the company has positioned itself as both an e-commerce platform and a major player in the world of customer acquisition for big brands.

What was the key to this successful transition?

Effective management of the strategy development process, a necessary characteristic of any organization that seeks to foster potentially disruptive opportunities, as well as a critical lesson from HBX Disruptive Strategy with Clayton Christensen.

To learn more, read Pinterest Expands Buyable PinsTo More E-Commerce Platforms, Reaching Thousands of Merchants (via TechCrunch).

Boston-based software startup Toast is one of the nation’s fastest growing companies, with a 550% year-over-year growth rate and sights set clearly on redefining the way restauranteurs run their businesses. 

While it's flourishing today, Toast initially struggled to find its place in the market and employed disruptive strategy techniques – effectively pivoting from an initial strategy of “specialization” to one of “integration” – to completely redefine its strategic focus and create a path to long-term success.

Toast entered the market in 2012 with an application that was focused on facilitating mobile payments at restaurants, allowing customers to split their tab, make payments, and get receipts delivered directly to their phones. According to President and co-founder Steve Fredette, it seemed like an easy decision at the time.

"The thinking was, let’s initially focus on mobile payments," he said. "It’s a service that we can easily sell and deploy. We thought we’d get a lot of volume with it, and build a marketplace.”

The problem with this approach was that mobile payments were only a small piece of a very jumbled "point of sale" ecosystem, which combines a variety of hardware and software to create a system that allows restaurants to take orders, process payments, and track sales and inventory.

Many of these legacy systems lacked key functionality, like the ability to manage customer loyalty programs, process mobile payments, and integrate online ordering, but proved incredibly difficult and expensive to build on to.

In discussions with a number of restaurants, Fredette quickly realized that he was not alone in his frustrations with the limitations of existing POS systems.

"The restaurants didn’t like that they had 5 or 6 different vendors with independent systems that didn’t talk to each other well," he said. "Online ordering was a system that didn’t talk to point of sale. Gift cards were a separate system that you’d have to train employees to use. Loyalty wasn’t built into the POS system. It was a bunch of pieces that didn’t fit together.”

Fortunately, Toast saw these complications as a strategic opportunity for the company and was quick to adjust.

“We felt in order to create a better customer experience, we had to start with the foundational side of it," Fredette said. "We started with the back-end, building in a way that we could layer a really good consumer experience on top of it. Now, we’ve built a system that is a bunch of systems in one.”

With this one strategic pivot, Toast was able to gain both a stronger footing in an intensely competitive landscape as well as a loyal following of hundreds of customers.

As Professor Christensen explains in our HBX Disruptive Strategy course, when you are competing in a world that’s characterized by performance that’s “not good enough,” you can’t win with a specialized approach, you must pursue an integrated system. Likewise, when you are competing in a world that is characterized by speed and modularity, you must pursue a specialized approach.

This is Part I of a two part series. Learn how Toast identified its customers' jobs to be done and leveraged those insights to improve upon its core product in Part II.

A product can be innovative without being disruptive: take the case of Apple's latest iPhone 6S release. 

With such new features as 4K video and 3D touch, this is a great example of a "sustaining innovation," as it builds upon pre-existing value networks and markets. 

People often refer to the iPhone as being “disruptive” – and they’re right – if they’re referring to the 2007 first generation release, which delivered laptop-type functionality for a fraction of the price. Since then, Apple has effectively “moved up” the value curve with sustaining innovations that continue to build higher levels of functionality.

The best iPhone ever isn't necessarily the best phone http://t.co/zSEiYI1NGx pic.twitter.com/BJSnmr8nQW

— WIRED (@WIRED) October 5, 2015

So, is the Apple iPhone innovative? Of course. But that doesn’t mean it’s still disruptive.

To learn more about disruption versus innovation, check out HBX Disruptive Strategy.

On Monday, Google announced the formation of a new parent company, Alphabet, which will serve as the umbrella for all of its business units. 

Google has clearly recognized that several of its business units are fundamentally different in nature, with each requiring a different management of its resources, processes, and profit formulas (“RPP”). Perhaps Alphabet will bring the autonomy that these individual units need, and therefore, empower these units to manage their own disruptive paths.

Managing several different innovative and disruptive businesses is a common challenge that many organizations face. Too often, organizations try to nurture an emerging business alongside a core business, and the results can be disastrous. 

In order to grow and thrive, disruptive businesses must be given the opportunity to develop their own resources, processes, and profit formula. Each business unit needs to feel free to make the best decisions for their own situation.

For more on Google's restructuring and the formation of Alphabet, check out the following articles:

• Google Goal in Restructuring as Alphabet: Autonomy
  via the New York Times
• What is Alphabet, Google's new company?
  via Business Insider
• Google Launches New Parent Company Called Alphabet
  via National Public Radio

Interested in learning more about how to position your company to avoid disruption and harness new growth opportunities in an interactive, online class?

Think SoulCycle’s secret to success is all loud music and loads of sweat? Think again.

With an 85% loyalty rate among its riders, SoulCycle is a prime example of a company that’s perfectly nailed its customers’ “job to be done,” built all the right experiences around that "job", and then let its marketing and branding follow suit. In doing so, the company elevated itself into a “purpose brand," resonating with consumers and turning one-time riders into “soul” advocates.

A look at SoulCycle, by the numbers, as it preps for its IPO http://t.co/PAbDd2X2fi pic.twitter.com/Yyw4JwWAH6

— ForbesInvesting (@ForbesInvestor) July 31, 2015

The jobs-to-be-done framework was developed by Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen to explain why people make the consumption choices they do. What makes this idea so powerful is that the job to be done pinpoints exactly what actually causes consumers to purchase one particular product or service over another under a given circumstance.

Consider for a moment what job health consumers are really trying to solve: most health clubs and fitness studios would probably tell you that it’s to get more fit. Sure, this may be true. However, it's not the full story. For some consumers, gyms are “hired" for their social and emotional aspects - the feeling of being a part of something bigger, or of having that moment of catharsis when you know you've pushed yourself to the limit. When viewed in this context, it may not just be another gym you are competing with to fulfill this job; alternatives might include running a marathon, joining a book group with friends, or even a night out at the club.

SoulCycle wants to change your life...and file for an IPO http://t.co/SDRpxHHAgi pic.twitter.com/EmV6uMifDe

— CNNMoney Investing (@CNNMoneyInvest) July 31, 2015

In discovering this job to be done, SoulCycle was able to tailor its product in an entirely differentiated way and then integrate all the right experiences around it. From the moment of check-in until the end of the ride, the SoulCycle experience is designed to deliver on aspects of community, atmosphere, emotion, storytelling, and most of all, being part of a movement that is bigger than yourself (not to mention providing a pretty darn good workout).

The origins of disruption theory lie in Clay Christensen’s research around why so many successful companies, run by seemingly competent managers, cannot sustain their success over time. Almost 90% of the companies present on the Fortune 500 List in 1955 are no longer on that list today.

Clay explains that the reason it is so difficult to sustain success over long periods of time is that the forces of low-end and new-market disruption are constantly at work, and incumbent businesses are incapable of responding to them. Because of this, disruption is often seen as a sort of “roadmap” for smaller organizations that wish to unseat the industry leader and thus is either regarded with fear or denial from the incumbent.

Many people are quick to label disruption as a threat to their organization, but in this video clip from our HBX Disruptive Strategy course, Clay provides a different perspective:

Simply put, disruption doesn’t necessarily have to be viewed as a threat to incumbent businesses. True, disruption eventually comes to every organization in every industry, but before it becomes a threat, it is also an opportunity. Clay says that the key for organizations wishing to harness disruption is timing.

So what is the best way to stay ahead of the curve and remain relevant in your industry? Clay shares his advice:

Want to learn more about Clay's theories and how you can apply them to capitalize on emerging opportunities and solve your organization's toughest strategic challenges? Enroll your team in HBX Disruptive Strategy with Clay Christensen, a new online program from Harvard Business School.

Photo courtesy of StarPilot Productions LLC

Building and Sustaining a Successful Enterprise (BSSE), based on the teachings of Clayton M. Christensen, is one of the most popular courses at Harvard Business School. The HBX team was thrilled to work with Clay to develop an online version of his course, Disruptive Strategy with Clayton Christensen, as the first offering from HBX Courses. 

Since launching in June 2014, organizational teams from more than 25 companies have taken the course and used it to help solve their most difficult strategic challenges. 

Initially, Willy Shih and Chet Huber, who teach BSSE with Clay and helped develop Disruptive Strategy, wondered whether HBX could replicate the live, interactive HBS classroom experience in an online platform. 

"I have been amazed at how well it seems to work," said Huber. "While I’m not sure anything can beat a live discussion, the combination of mini-lectures, video cases and interactive sessions do a great job – and have some unique advantages. Tailoring the material to a firm’s unique situation, and engaging each student individually (including cold calls) is something I wish I could do with 90 students in a classroom."

"The thing that shocked me on Disruptive Strategy was the idea that the HBX product had the potential to be BETTER than the classroom product," Shih added.  "It’s a comprehensive, scalable way to simultaneously bring our BSSE material to life for an entire organization, mapped across their unique competitive situation."

For John Woodson, Assistant Director of Disruptive Strategy, the response from early participants has been a huge motivator. "I heard from a recent participant that Disruptive Strategy was one of the top three executive education programs he has ever been apart of," he said. "The impact the course is having on organizations like athenahealth and Intuit has been rewarding to see." 

The range of companies that were able to benefit from the program in the first year shows the potential for HBX to reach a wider audience and allow more organizations to put Clay's theories into practice. 

“I put [my content] on the HBX platform because if I don’t do that, then every year at maximum 900 people will be exposed to the theories," Christensen said. "...and many more people need to have access.” 

Here are some of the highlights from the first year of HBX Courses:

This post is a part of our HBX Year One series celebrating the one year anniversary of the public launch of HBX. Don't miss our other infographics on HBX, CORe, and Live! 

As a Product Manager for HBX, I have the good fortune to work with Clayton Christensen, an expert on strategy, innovation, and growth. 

Professor Christensen’s MBA course Building and Sustaining a Successful Enterprise is the most popular elective at Harvard Business School and is based on his book The Innovator’s Solution, the sequel to the enormously impactful The Innovator’s Dilemma.

Having written more than nine books on disruption and innovation, Clay has also founded a nonprofit institute, a consulting firm, and a boutique investment firm – all focused on disseminating his research and ideas on innovation.  With such a large global presence, one would think that Clay Christensen wouldn’t need any more help scaling his ideas. 

However, last year, the team at HBX worked diligently with Clay to produce and launch the first ever HBX Course: Disruptive Strategy with Clayton Christensen.  We recently caught up with Clay and asked why he chose to put his content online, even after seeing success with his other initiatives.  The answer was two-fold and (not surprisingly) mirrors Clay’s very own theories.

Creating maximum exposure

According to Clay, online learning can scale in a way that no other type of learning can. Harvard Business School is a selective and expensive graduate program that only benefits 900 students per year; and even then there are enough seats in Clay’s course for only a third of them. 

As Clay explained, “I put [my content] on the HBX platform because if I don’t do that, then every year at maximum 900 people will be exposed to the theories…and many more people need to have access.”

By using the HBX platform as a digital thoroughfare, the theories of disruption, innovation, and successful strategic growth no longer need to be exclusive and can now help organizations that are both large incumbents in need of change, but also small and agile that may not be able to afford a consulting session. 

Reaching new audiences

By leveraging the reach of the internet, Clay’s theories can now be consumed by organizations in distant locales that don’t have access to conferences and speaking events. While Clay often travels, HBX Disruptive Strategy can travel to any place in the world that has electricity and an internet connection, thus opening up new markets for this high level educational content.

In fact, one of HBX’s most recent cohorts is a small nonprofit organization in Lagos, Nigeria called West Africa Vocational Education (or WAVE).  WAVE’s mission is to tackle youth unemployment in West Africa, and they believe that Clay’s theories will help them execute on their mission in a much more effective and sustainable way, making a much larger impact on their community.

Clay agrees: “Managers will be much more successfully innovative if they take this course. If they don’t take the course, either they have to try to be successfully innovative by trial and error, or listen to opinions of where the market is going.  But there is no data that can guide [them] as [they] look into the future. Having a theory to guide you gives a tremendous advantage.”

The power of collective learning

One might argue that with so many copies in print and the tremendous growth of online retailers like Amazon.com, Clay’s books would be able to reach many more people, and thus be the vehicle to scaling his theories.  However, a book cannot capture the power of collective learning, particularly when the theories are needed by a team that is aiming to execute on difficult strategic change. 

Clay is cognizant that when someone reads his book, they don’t always describe his theories in the best way. And then, like a game of telephone, the theories become distorted and lose their effectiveness as each person tells the next. 

As Clay puts it, “I thought of myself as writing to millions of people, but I have realized that’s the wrong way to frame things. Because what I write is consumed individually by individual people who have a book or an article…everybody else on the team didn’t learn that way of thinking about the problem. Your readers are your resellers of the ideas; [and through] the process of selling and reselling, the idea just loses its momentum.”         

Small group dynamics

“The ideas are consumed by a group – and that’s when you come up with a new idea.  There’s a whole cadre of people who understand the same concepts, [have] the same language and together they can teach everyone else [with] much more fidelity…and a consistent lens.”      

We too believe that by utilizing our online platform and the technologies that are available to us, Clay’s timeless theories will have their maximum impact. We look forward to helping companies far and wide refine their strategies and implement innovative thinking.