Phoenix

March 2000

Class I took its second trip to Phoenix. Having completed an elective in Technology Management and just starting an elective in strategy, the students were particularly interested in an opportunity to attend a 2-day workshop lead by Clayton Christensen, a popular author and lecturer on strategic business and technology management. The workshop, entitled "Exploit Disruption: Transform Market Threats into Growth Opportunities," was structured as a "Master Class" with 75 attendees from over 30 companies around the world. Students had abundant opportunity to interact with both faculty and other senior-level managers in attendance. One of Dr. Christensen's books was used in the Strategy course, and the material covered during the workshop was linked directly to the coursework. In addition to the workshop component, a site visit was made to Honeywell in Phoenix, which included presentations and a panel discussion on product development process improvements and utilization of the web. The class also had the opportunity as meet with Doug Laird, RIT graduate and VP of Product Development at Transmeta, to hear about Transmeta's evolution from a garage-shop operation to a rapidly growing high tech company in Silicon Valley. Because Transmeta's new line of low-power processors is representative of a disruptive threat to Intel, the discussion fit very nicely into the overall theme of the workshop.