The more that I do what I do — which is to bring new things to life by helping others do the same — the more I believe that there are some aspects of business behave in a way that’s similar to the laws that underpin physics. In essence, they are something akin to laws of nature, inviolable and highly predictable.
This statement by Clay Christensen feels like it’s one of them. Trying to grow a new business model inside of an existing business is like trying to raise a baby whale on dry land; in principle it should work (it breathes air, it’s a mammal, we’re mammals, we breath air), but in practice it’s going to kill the whale. Or at best limit what it could have been by forcing it to become an animal different from what it wanted to be.