‘Beyond Disruption: Innovate and Achieve Growth without Displacing Industries, Companies, or Jobs’, by W Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne
In their new book, the authors of bestseller Blue Ocean Strategy link two management obsessions: the “fourth industrial revolution” and stakeholder capitalism.
As well as creative destruction and the use of their own theory, which urged businesses to redefine an industry problem and cross industry boundaries to solve it, there is a third option: “nondisruptive creation” of new markets outside the boundaries of existing industries. Historic examples include sanitary towels or microfinance. These were innovations where “social good and economic good went hand in hand” without upsetting established industries.
Pursued at scale, their ideas could help entrepreneurs and governments by “creating new jobs with little displacement of existing ones”, even as automation advances, they maintain. It is an enticing vision, which could in theory minimise the backlash that disruptive innovations have triggered throughout history. In practice, some of the methods they propose for achieving such breakthroughs are less novel. “Enablers” for nondisruptive growth include old favourites such as resourcefulness and a “‘could’ not ‘should’” mindset. The idea of non-destructive creation has also been around for a while.
Disruptive innovation is so embedded that it is hard to see why an ambitious entrepreneur with a brilliant idea would step away from a golden long-term opportunity just because it might have a short-term impact on incumbent industries. Still, Beyond Disruption is a high-profile contribution to the running debate about how to shift such thinking.
‘Walk Away to Win: A Playbook to Combat Workplace Bullying’, by Megan Carle
Air, the recently released feature film about how Nike revolutionised the basketball market with the Air Jordan shoe, is a paean to the company and its (male) managers. Walk Away…
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