but X isn't really an insulated org... it has close ties with other parts of Google. It shares the corporate infra and it's not hard to get inside and poke around. it has to be, because it's intended to create new products that get commercialized through Google or other Alphabet companies.
A better example would be Calico, which faced significant struggles getting access to internal Google resources, while also being very secretive and closed off (the term used was typically an "all-in bet" or an "all-out bet", or something in between. Verily just underwent a decoupling from Google because Alphabet wants to sell it.
I think if you really want to survive cycles of the innovator's dilemma, you make external orgs that still share lines of communications back to the mothership, maintaining partial ownership, and occasionally acquiring these external startups.
I work in Pharma and there's a common pattern of acquiring external companies and drugs to stay relevant. I've definitely seen multiple external acquisitions "transform" the company that acquires them, if for no other reason than the startup employees have a lot more gumption and solved problems the big org was struggling with.
MSFT were the masters of this technique (spin off a startup, acquire it after it proves viable) for decades, but sadly they stopped.
Even internal to MS I worked on 2 teams that were 95% independent from the mothership, on one of them (Microsoft Band) we even went to IKEA and bought our own desks.
Pretty successful in regards to getting a product to market (Band 1 and 2 all up had iirc $50M in funding compared to Apple Watch's billion), but the big company politics still got us in the end.
Of course Xbox is the most famous example of MS pulling off an internal skunk works project leading to massive success.
There are varying degrees of insulation. I'm not convinced that Calico is a good example of Christensen's recommendations. It seems like a vanity research project sponsored by a Google founder rather than an internal startup intended to bring a disruptive innovation to market.
A better example would be Calico, which faced significant struggles getting access to internal Google resources, while also being very secretive and closed off (the term used was typically an "all-in bet" or an "all-out bet", or something in between. Verily just underwent a decoupling from Google because Alphabet wants to sell it.
I think if you really want to survive cycles of the innovator's dilemma, you make external orgs that still share lines of communications back to the mothership, maintaining partial ownership, and occasionally acquiring these external startups.
I work in Pharma and there's a common pattern of acquiring external companies and drugs to stay relevant. I've definitely seen multiple external acquisitions "transform" the company that acquires them, if for no other reason than the startup employees have a lot more gumption and solved problems the big org was struggling with.