The author describes the innovator's dilemma as the conflict arises between old and new

innovations. Essentially, people develop innovations, nurture them and bring them to market.
Then, they defend these innovations. The innovator's dilemma is to determine at what point a
new innovation is truly innovative and game-changing and at what point the old innovation is the
better option.
Innovation reflects the unknown. A new innovation is one that is unproven, and there is always
going to be a degree of risk aversion that drives people to prefer existing technologies and ideas
over new ones. This risk aversion lies at the heart of the innovator's dilemma. The author
describes it as being based on emotional and psychological responses. In some cases, there may
be ego involved for one who is involved in the old innovation – when AltaVista and Yahoo
rejected Google's ideas they may not have realized it, but they were defending their own
innovations. However, such a response led them to make the wrong move, and today Yahoo is
struggling and if AltaVista still exists nobody is aware of that. As a result of this phenomenon,
innovators are seldom able to sustain innovation. They instead find that their interests change,
and with these changes comes the pursuit of refining or defending their old innovations. It can be
difficult to let those old works go and pursue something new and better. Yet innovation is
essentially a reflection of creative destruction. The old innovation might still be useful but if
there is a better innovation available, it will win the day eventually. The best in business
recognize the value of innovation, even when that innovation threatens their own personal
legacy.

The point that the chapter makes is that most good ideas are rejected by our internal filters. The
ideas never go anywhere, but there are a lot of good ideas in each person. The trick is to
recognize the best of these ideas and then to pursue them. For an invention to have an impact on
humanity, it often requires determined pursuit of that idea as something that can be applied to
other humans. We usually do not treat our ideas in this way, but instead we tend to be nonchalant
about our ideas and let them slide into the ether. Good ideas do not always look like good ideas –
so they are rejected. The reality is that it can be tough to judge off hand how good an idea is, but
there are a lot of good ideas and if we pay more attention to them, we might find that innovation
flows more freely.