via krisnair

Managers within Monster suggested that the job board site was itself under threat by the next generation of job-finding tools. So-called job aggregator sites such as Indeed, SimplyHired, and Jobster allow the viewing of available jobs across a variety of job boards, and also list their own jobs. While none — alone — is as popular as Monster, together the aggregators get more traffic. Indeed.com is growing faster in unique visitors than Monster. Monster made the same mistake as the Globe: they believed their business model was inviolate. They didn’t anticipate, and didn’t recognize, that the fish were swimming in a new direction. This illustrates not that either company’s managers were stupid, but that it’s very difficult to act on threats to the existing business model.

[Source: Will Monster.com Go the Way of Newspapers? – Tom Davenport – HarvardBusiness.org]

Through my two trimesters in Thunderbird, I have heard this argument being played out again and again that managers are often myopic to extraneous innovations and there is definitely some truth to it. However, that is where the innovative capability of the company comes into play. I have often found that there is no company where innovation is lacking. It gets stubbed in its process because current managers cannot see “beyond” the big picture. In his book, “The Innovator’s Solution”, Prof Christensen expounds how middle level managers do not support disruptive innovations because of its intrinsic nature of disruptiveness.

I believe that some employee within Monster.com definitely saw the direction of “job-boards.” However, his idea of creating an aggregator would
a. either have been disapproved as Monster.com would not see its relevance
b. It is disruptive to the current business model, where high paying clients pay Monster.com for the pool of job seekers.

As far as Monster.com managers were concerned, they were doing the right thing. However, it still caused them their awkard position in the market today.

Accept and adopt disruption techniques into your management. It would go a long way as far as your company is concerned.