You’re Not Disruptive, You’re Bad at Innovating.
I’m sure that if business development and marketing consultants had a nickel for every time they heard: “We want to be disruptive, completely change the industry, we want to be the Apple of our industry.” or “What we need is an App.” they would be driving up to their next client meeting in the most opulent Rolls-Royce. At least I know that that’s what I’d like.
Many times I have found myself politely nodding my head with my hands forming the Merkel triangle (yes the one that has been present at all the G20 meetings for the past 8 plus years) as I listen to a prospective client talking about industry disruption citing Amazon, Apple, Uber, Airbnb, Tesla as case studies of how simple it is to come up with a great idea, develop it, test it, finance it, market and launch it. I do not blame them for not having a grasp on the subject of industry innovation; most of these business owners are too busy looking inward to understand that innovation begins outside and far away.
I was recently invited to co-author a book with Dr. Oscar Barroso Huertas, a tenure professor at CETYS Graduate School of Business and co-founder of BCB Marketing Intelligence, titled Fearless Leadership where, among other subjects I had the privilege of sharing my point of view on leadership during change. I shared my experience as a beast of burden in the fisheries industry where I learned the importance of weak signals; identifying them, reading them and planning accordingly. I learned that for as long as you have your head down, focused on pulling on ropes, distributing the cargo and operating the equipment, you are incapable of identifying when the winds will pick up or know which direction they will come from. In business this truth also applies, yet many business owners are led to believe that they should keep their heads down, just sit down and embark on a creative rant in order to become disruptive; simple and effective right?
Yes, Apple disrupted the consumer electronics market through their computer in pocket technology, not the sophisticated phone technology. Apple was participating in a competitive market not by looking inwards or over at the others were doing, but by looking up and towards the horizon. How? Because their business model and consequently their company culture is centered around innovation. Likewise it is not enough to just have innovation at the core of your business model, but it helps. The majority of these business owners that want to be disruptive run business models that stifle innovation by favoring operational excellence and considering a budget for Research and Development as a luxury or unnecessary cost.
If I were to ask an average person to tell me how the winds look while we’re out on a fishing trip, they probably wouldn’t know where to look, most likely up. If you would’ve asked someone from the Board at Blackberry or Nokia where they could innovate on their phone, they might have talked about battery life or phone size. Yet Apple saw potential in elements that were not being developed with telecommunications in mind: multi input touch screens and low consumption processors that most considered to be a neat gag, together formed the central pillars for making a small computer that could fit in your pocket and house all of your technological needs. The secret is knowing where to search and what to look for. Look over at the horizon and tell me the color of the water.
Innovation is centered around harnessing the power of the resources and knowledge that are around you to simplify or optimize a process or otherwise better serve a need; not by simply complicating what you do. All businesses have the potential to revolutionize an industry and even beyond it, Apple helped revolutionize the taxi industry as an example, but the way that we go about embarking on the process of innovation is the key to success.
As consultants we are tasked with guiding business owners through the process of innovation, and more importantly in educating them on what innovation truly is: a tool that allows businesses to adapt to shifting markets and develop a competitive advantage. A spazzy marketing campaign about being served a latte in an uncomfortably crooked mug in a cafe with surrealist decor might make you trendy, but there is a long ways between trendy and innovative and an even longer ways to being disruptive.
As the tectonics of markets continually readjust themselves, businesses are finding themselves with the need to continually adapt in order not merely survive but to thrive in the new environments; what we strive for is a world of better innovators.
