Examples

This is a growing collection of examples of applications of lenses. We are adding more examples over time. We welcome requests for explanation and analysis of other examples and anomalies.

Job Definition: Mall vs. Social Media

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13 Jun 2023

Since solutions for JTBD don’t fit into a product category, the structure of a job definition helps to see why people bring solutions into their lives. One example is that social media competes with—really, has basically replaced—“the mall” as a way for youth to gather and connect.

Our Love-Hate Relationship with Excel

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6 Oct 2020

I’ve worked with Clayton Christensen, co-founder of the Christensen Institute and architect of Disruptive Innovation, for many years and discussed everything from business strategy to the elliptical orbits of planets around the sun. Over the last few years one idea has come up time and time again: data are not discovered but created. And I see this struggle in how some people feel about Microsoft Excel.

Why bother with theory when you've got big data?

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25 Mar 2020

When I do a search for the term “big data,” I get 8.47 billion results in just over a half second. On the first page of my search results there is a listing of the most recent articles on big data as well as big data services offerings. But followers of Disruptive Innovation and related theories know that we take a theory-first approach to understanding the world.