Disruptive Innovation and the Academic Library

Abstract

In this presentation I will review the theories of business strategy developed by Clayton Christensen and his colleagues in their three books — the "Innovator’s Dilemma", "Innovator’s Solution", and "Seeing What’s Next". I will apply this work to academic libraries and scholarly communication and will show that academic libraries are likely to be disrupted by new technologies and their application by competing organizations. I will then show that libraries also have the potential to drive, and benefit from, disruptive change especially in the scholarly communication value chain. The result should provide guidance to academic librarians in establishing strategies, organizational structures, and values that will position them in the scholarly information and learning value chains in ways that will assure their relevance.

The result should provide attendees with a basic understanding of the most important of Christensen’s theories and how they can provide insights into the current state of academic libraries and help to chart the future.

This work will build on my article, (Lewis, David W. “The Innovator’s Dilemma: Disruptive Change and Academic Libraries.” Library Administration and Management 18(2):68-74 April 2004. Available at: http://idea.iupui.edu/dspace/handle/1805/173), but will advance and develop it in significant ways.