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The End of the Digital Revolution

Here’s What You Need to Know

The End of the Digital Revolution

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

The history of digital technology has largely been one of denial followed by disruption. First came the concept of the productivity paradox, which noted the limited economic impact of digital technology. When e-commerce appeared, many doubted that it could ever compete with physical retail. Similar doubts were voiced about digital media.

Today, it’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t believe in the power of digital technology. Whole industries have been disrupted. New applications driven by cloud computing, artificial intelligence and blockchain promise even greater advancement to come. Every business needs to race to adopt them in order to compete for the future.

Ironically, amid all this transformation the digital revolution itself is ending. Over the next decade, new computing architectures will move to the fore and advancements in areas like synthetic biology and materials science will reshape entire fields, such as healthcare, energy and manufacturing. Simply waiting to adapt won’t be enough. The time to prepare is now.

1. Drive Digital Transformation

As I explained in Mapping Innovation, innovation is never a single event, but a process of discovery, engineering and transformation. Clearly, with respect to digital technology, we are deep into the transformation phase. So the first part of any post-digital strategy is to accelerate digital transformation efforts in order to improve your competitive position.

One company that’s done this very well is Walmart. As an old-line incumbent in the physical retail industry, it appeared to be ripe for disruption as Amazon reshaped how customers purchased basic items. Why drive out to a Walmart store for a package of toothpaste when you can just click a few buttons on your phone?

Yet rather than ceding the market to Amazon, Walmart has invested heavily in digital technology and has achieved considerable success. It wasn’t any one particular tactic or strategy made the difference, but rather the acknowledgment that every single process needed to be reinvented for the digital age. For example, the company is using virtual reality to revolutionize how it does in-store training.

Perhaps most of all, leaders need to understand that digital transformation is human transformation. There is no shortage of capable vendors that can implement technology for you. What’s key, however, is to shift your culture, processes and business model to leverage digital capabilities.

2. Explore Post-Digital Technologies

While digital transformation is accelerating, advancement in the underlying technology is slowing down. Moore’s law, the consistent doubling of computer chip performance over the last 50 years, is nearing its theoretical limits. It has already slowed down considerably and will soon stop altogether. Yet there are non-digital technologies under development that will be far more powerful than anything we’ve ever seen before.

Consider Intel, which sees its future in what it calls heterogeneous computing combining traditional digital chips with non-digital architectures, such as quantum and neuromorphic. It announced a couple of years ago its Pohoiki Beach neuromorphic system that processes information up to 1,000 times faster and 10,000 more efficiently than traditional chips for certain tasks.

IBM has created a network to develop quantum computing technology, which includes research labs, startups and companies that seek to be early adopters of the technology. Like neuromorphic computing, quantum systems have the potential to be thousands, if not millions, of times more powerful than today’s technology.

The problem with these post-digital architectures is that no one really knows how they are going to work. They operate on a very different logic than traditional computers, will require new programming languages and algorithmic strategies. It’s important to start exploring these technologies now or you could find yourself years behind the curve.

3. Focus on Atoms, Not Bits

The digital revolution created a virtual world. My generation was the first to grow up with video games and our parents worried that we were becoming detached from reality. Then computers entered offices and Dan Bricklin created Visicalc, the first spreadsheet program. Eventually smartphones and social media appeared and we began spending almost as much time in the virtual world as we did in the physical one.

Essentially, what we created was a simulation economy. We could experiment with business models in our computers, find flaws and fix them before they became real. Computer-aided design (CAD) software allowed us to design products in bits before we got down to the hard work of shaping atoms. Because it’s much cheaper to fail in the virtual world than the physical one, this made our economy much more efficient.

Yet the next great transformation will be from bits to atoms. Digital technology is creating revolutions in things like genomics and materials science. Artificial intelligence and cloud computing are reshaping fields like manufacturing and agriculture. Quantum and neuromorphic computing will accelerate these trends.

Much like those new computing architectures, the shift from bits to atoms will create challenges. Applying the simulation economy to the world of atoms will require new skills and we will need people with those skills to move from offices in urban areas to factory floors and fields. They will also need to learn to collaborate effectively with people in those industries.

4. Transformation is Always a Journey, Never a Destination

The 20th century was punctuated by two waves of disruption. The first, driven by electricity and internal combustion, transformed almost every facet of daily life and kicked off a 50-year boom in productivity. The second, driven by the microbe, the atom and the bit, transformed fields such as agriculture, healthcare and management.

Each of these technologies followed the pattern of discovery, engineering and transformation. The discovery phase takes place mostly out of sight, with researchers working quietly in anonymous labs. The engineering phase is riddled with errors, as firms struggle to shape abstract concepts into real products. A nascent technology is easy to ignore, because its impact hasn’t been felt yet.

The truth is that disruption doesn’t begin with inventions, but when an ecosystem emerges to support them. That’s when the transformation phase begins and takes us by surprise, because transformation never plays out like we think it will. The future will always, to a certain extent, unpredictable for the simple reason that it hasn’t happened yet.

Today, we’re on the brink of a new era of innovation that will be driven by new computing architectures, genomics, materials science and artificial intelligence. That’s why we need to design our organizations for transformation by shifting from vertical hierarchies to horizontal networks.

Most of all, we need to shift our mindsets from seeing transformation as set of discreet objectives to a continuous journey of discovery. Digital technology has only been one phase of that journey. The most exciting things are still yet to come.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credit: Pixabay

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What Disruptive Innovation Really Is

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What Disruptive Innovation Really Is

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

I recently read an article in ZDnet by Sherin Shibu discussing disruptive innovation, primarily through the lens of Clay Christensen’s work at the Harvard Business School. The article itself is very sound, and yet I found myself disagreeing with it on a number of points. In this blog, I want to interleave what Shibu says (presented in standard font) with my own commentary (inserted in italics) so that readers can develop their own point of view from the interaction.

What is disruptive innovation?

Disruptive innovation theory is a cautionary concept for large, established companies: There’s danger in becoming too good at what you do best. Delivering to the mainstream market is good and all, but a disruptor could target a market underserved by your current product with a new business model.

For me, disruptive innovation has a much bigger footprint because it also underlies virtually all venture capital investment. Its fundamental promise is to release an enormous amount of trapped value by reengineering an established system or process. The reason it is a cautionary concept for large established companies is that they are the custodians of the legacy systems and processes that are trapping the value. Yes, they can reduce the overhead by optimizing what they have, but no, they cannot compete with a categorically better way of doing things.

Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen developed the concept of disruptive innovation in the 1990s with his groundbreaking book The Innovator’s Dilemma, and the theory became wildly popular in the decades to follow. But in some respects it has become a victim of its own success: “Despite broad dissemination, the theory’s core concepts have been widely misunderstood and its basic tenets frequently misapplied,” notes The Harvard Business Review.

Disruptive innovation is a process by which entrepreneurs break into a low-end or new market and create business models that are different from existing ones in those markets. Disruption has occurred when their business model becomes mainstream.

So, a new company targets an overlooked customer base — and manages to deliver a better product at a lower price point. At first, the incumbents don’t take the threat seriously, which allows the potential disruptors to gain a foothold. Then the disruptors target the incumbents’ mainstream customers. If the potential disruptors create something that the mainstream adopts in volume, they have successfully disrupted the market.

I think this reading of the model overemphasizes the need to attack the low end of the market. Yes, that is a proven path, but it is not the only one. The iPhone disrupted from the high end, for example, as has Tesla.

What is disruptive innovation not?

Defining disruptive innovation isn’t easy and not everyone is going to agree on every example. Classic disruptive innovation should not simply describe just any situation of upheaval. If a new company shakes things up a bit for incumbent competitors, that scene is not necessarily one of disruptive innovation — that could simply be a breakthrough. In order for this theory to have power and be used as an analytical and predictive model, it needs to be precisely defined.

My definition of disruptive innovation is one that overthrows and is incompatible with the existing business model or operating model of an industry. In the case of the iPhone, it was Apple’s ability to go over the top of the carrier to provide products and services directly to the consumer. In the case of Tesla, it is its ability to bypass the dealership model not only in sales but in services as well.

Christensen, for example, argued that Uber is not a disruptive innovator according to his definition. It fails to meet two requirements, in that it did not start in a low-end or new market. Instead, it built a name for itself in a mainstream market and then started drawing unserved customers with less expensive solutions. And being less expensive or creating an app to hail rides sustains the existing model rather than disrupts.

This is just wrong and shows the limitations of the “start at the low end” concept. Uber reengineered both the operating model and the business model of on-demand car transportation, allowing consumers to call a taxi to themselves, and allowing Uber to build a fleet of cars and drivers at no capital expense.

Not everyone thinks that’s the case and other perspectives can be found that argue Uber actually is a disruptive innovator. From this perspective, Uber started with a low-market foothold by offering on-demand black car services. It was only when the startup introduced UberX, a low-end market offering, that it was able to move into the mainstream.

What counts as disruption is up for debate, especially as Christensen’s theory is applied to shifting contexts.

In the case of Uber, focusing on the low end simply misses the point.

Why is it important to define disruptive innovation?

Disruption isn’t a fixed point; it’s the evolution of a product or service from the fringes of customers to the mainstream. It’s important to define it this way because then it becomes more about the experimental nature of the process than about the output. See, disruptive innovations don’t always succeed and not every successful company is a disruptor. The process is about building new business models previously unseen in the target industry and appealing to a more niche customer base at first.

In my view, disruptive innovation is a function of a breakthrough technology intersecting with a pool of trapped value, enabling the reengineering of a system or process that eliminates one or more whole categories of spend in its value chain. It is a categorical innovation as opposed to a product or marketing innovation.

Is disruptive innovation the primary way innovation operates?

No, it is not the primary factor of innovation. According to HBR, “disruption theory does not, and never will, explain everything about innovation specifically or business success generally.” It does, however, help predict which businesses will succeed and it provides a solid foundation for further research – it’s captured academic attention for 27 years.

I agree with the point that disruptive innovation is not the primary type. Most innovation is sustaining, meaning that it improves an existing system rather than overthrowing it—evolution, not revolution. What I disagree with wholeheartedly, on the other hand, is the notion that the theory helps predict which businesses will succeed. Historically, the advantage has gone to start-ups because they are unconflicted in their commitment to the new way. Established enterprises, however, have learned that they can neutralize start-ups if they are willing to be fast followers. Microsoft’s Azure is a superb example of a company that has done this. Disney’s response to Netflix is another good example, and it appears as if General Motors is on a comparable path toward neutralizing Tesla.

What is an example of disruptive innovation?

Netflix was around since 1997, and at first, it didn’t appeal to Blockbuster’s core clientele. Renting movies usually happened in person, and Netflix was all online. Plus, Netflix took a few days to deliver movies because selections came through the mail. Blockbuster could easily ignore Netflix because it didn’t have the brick-and-mortar infrastructure needed to dominate the market at that time.

This glosses over what was the initial disruptive innovation that Netflix provided with its home delivery model based on DVDs. The key differentiator at the beginning was designing out late fees.

Over time though, as streaming technology developed, Blockbuster’s target clients were drawn toward Netflix. The same impulsiveness that made renting a movie right away more desirable than getting a movie a few days later translated into wanting to watch movies with a click of a mouse instead of going to a physical location to rent a DVD. Disruptive innovation technology, in this case, streaming, goes hand in hand with implementing innovation.

There is another story playing out in Netflix’s transition from DVD shipping to streaming. It required the company to disrupt itself. This is an extraordinary ask, as most successful disruptive innovations attack someone else’s profit pool, not one’s own. Reed Hastings deserves enormous credit for leading the company through this change, and I would encourage the academy to focus its research lens on how in the world he was able to do so when so many CEOs have fallen short.

Are there any disruptive innovation technologies to keep an eye on?

Online learning is a technology to watch because it’s reaching a population that in-person learning can’t reach at a lower price point.

The main technologies to keep an eye on are the ones that tackle an underserved market and have the potential to expand their offerings to appeal to the mainstream.

Something like autonomous vehicles, for example, can seem innovative, but they aren’t disruptive according to the theory because they’ll be quickly absorbed into existing industries. The incumbent advantage is strong.

The important thing to remember is that innovation does not always lead to disruption.

I strongly support the idea that online education delivery has the power to disrupt the education market—again, a breakthrough technology intersecting with a boatload of trapped value. I think the point about autonomous vehicles is interesting as well because I agree they will be absorbed into the existing industries. But while they may not disrupt the automotive industry, I do think they can reengineer transportation and logistics.

Overall, I support Shibu’s main thesis which is that we have come to take disruptive innovation for granted and have become careless with how we apply the term. And while we part ways on how best to apply it, I still endorse Clay’s breakthrough insights in The Innovator’s Dilemma, which had a huge impact on a whole generation of companies in Silicon Valley.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

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Kickstart Change with Reclaimed Focus and Attention

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Kickstart Change with Reclaimed Focus and Attention

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

In 2019 we experienced the shock and the pain that resulted from the globally disruptive global Covid 19 pandemic. To both survive and thrive in the new decade of uncertainty, many people still need help and guidance to connect to, understand and manage their anxieties, fears, inertia, and confusion about the future to effectively ride the waves of disruptive change. Yet, according to Johann Hari, in his best-selling book – Stolen Focus, all over the world, our focus and attention have been stolen, and our ability to pay attention is collapsing, and we need to be intentional in reclaiming it.

He describes the wide range of consequences this has on our lives, which are further impacted by pervasive and addicting technology we are being forced to use in our virtual world, exasperated by the pandemic and the need to work virtually, from home. He reveals how our dwindling attention spans predate the internet, and how its decline is accelerating at an alarming rate.

He suggests that if we want to get back our ability to focus, stop multitasking and practice paying attention. Also, if we want to kickstart change and help people feel confident in their readiness, competence, and capacity to change and innovate in a world of unknowns, it all starts with improving our ability to pay deep attention to what is really going on.

Yet, in the thesaurus there are 286 synonyms, antonyms, and words related to paying attention, such as: listen, and giving heed, so what might be the key first steps to take in reclaiming your focus and attention?

Power of focus and attention

Energy flows where attention goes

Placing our focus and attention activates our energy, and our energy flows where our attention goes.

So, if you have been feeling tired and lethargic, or overwhelmed and burned out, then take a moment to consider how you might score yourself on an attentive-distractive continuum and consider how similar, or different you are to US college students who can now focus on one task for only 65 seconds, and where office workers on average manage only three minutes?

Being intentional

Involves getting clear upfront about what you want to achieve, by setting an intention to achieve a specific outcome or result in the future that is important to you. In a world of unknowns, paying deep attention and being intentional are the key foundations for recovery, rebalance, and transformation.

Limiting ways of seeing, being, and acting in the world

Many people are still experiencing unconscious intrinsic, or reactive responses to their pandemic-induced work situations and are suffering from stress overload, overwhelm, and burnout.

This is because our autonomic nervous systems, which control our cardiovascular, respiratory, digestive, urinary, and reproductive functions, and responses to stress, operate outside of our conscious control in two different and co-dependent and often competing systems.

Parasympathetic fight or flight system

Put very simply, our sympathetic nervous systems get overloaded by heightened stress levels, which ignite our protective fight or flight system, which normally allows our bodies to function under stress and danger, and, as a result, impacts significantly on our levels of tiredness, exhaustion, and burnt-out emotional, mental and physical states. This exasperates our inherent, unconscious needs to self-preserve (gut), feelings of isolation and loneliness (heat), and having the limited presence of mind (head) and reverts many of us into survival mode, and shift out of alignment, where we become physiologically incoherent (out of balance).

Which is not conducive to knowing and activating what we can truly, really, and actually influence and control in our lives, which requires us to effectively balance chaos with order.

Reduced capacity

When operating in survival mode, we are unable (like the US College students) to take the sacred pauses we need to make the space to attend and observe, through retreat, and reflection.

We are no longer able to access our inner knowing, play in the space of possibility, create a normalized state of equilibrium and calm, and be coherent and congruent in our daily lives.

Our overall capacity to set clear goals, make smart decisions, creatively solve problems, courageously take the right actions, harness our intuition, compassionately cultivate understanding and perception, develop good relationships, learn and develop, and finally, our health and well-being, are significantly reduced.

Initiate reclaiming focus and attention

Because we don’t know if companies will ever return to their pre-pandemic-like worlds, and become future-fit, people need to be reskilled in how to focus, how to observe, how to deeply focus and attend, and how to be intentional.

Developing daily habits to be focused and productive

Being intentional about breathing

To help balance and initiate harmonizing our autonomic nervous systems, develop physiological coherence, to respond optimally to the world, starts with developing focus and attention on your breath.

Doing this helps your neurology to relax, reduce stress and anxiety, increase calmness, and reconnect to the self.

Sounds simple, yet in my global coaching practice, clients would often turn up feeling overwhelmed and incoherent, so we would begin the session with a “box breathing” exercise. This involves breathing while you slowly count to four for a total of four times – four counts of breathing in, four counts of holding your breath, four counts of exhaling, and four more counts of holding after your exhale. We could both be grounded, and coherent, to partner and connect in high-impact and productive sessions.

Being intentional in stepping away from your screens

According to one 2019 survey of 1,057 U.S. office workers, 87 percent of professionals spend most of their workday staring at screens: an average of seven hours a day. Closing your laptop and taking a quick walk outside, in nature allows your brain to recharge for your next task, and enables your autonomic nervous system to take a well-deserved break and calm down.

Sounds simple, yet in my global coaching practice, clients found this very difficult to do, this might involve no TV screens in bedrooms, leaving phones outside bedrooms, turning phones off at 8.00 pm, buying an alarm clock, setting and sticking to a dedicated start and finish work times, taking regular lunch breaks outside in nature and coffee breaks with friends. Be playful and allow your mind to enjoy wandering into wondering.

Working in focused intervals

A recent article in Inc stated that – “In addition to the seven or eight hours of adequate sleep that so many entrepreneurs and CEOs neglect, taking smart breaks during your workday, and having longer periods of downtime are keys to being more productive”.

Sounds simple, again in my global coaching practice I had to negotiate with clients to be intentionally disciplined and methodical in planning their days, weeks, and months. This involved scheduling time to initiate or sustain a mindfulness or meditation practice, engage in a regular exercise program, go shopping to buy and eat healthy foods (eliminating desk-side snacks), being clear on key deliverables and breaking down key tasks into bite-size bits, and saying no to meetings that don’t contribute towards achieving these.

When we change the way we attend, a different world can come forth, for ourselves, others we are interacting with, and the environment we are operating within. When we know how to really, truly, and deeply attend, and observe, we can go to our place of deeper knowing, rethink and then act swiftly and inflow to effect the transformational breakthroughs that change the world as we know it.

Find out more about our work at ImagineNation™

Find out about our collective, learning products and tools, including The Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams Certified Program, presented by Janet Sernack, is a collaborative, intimate, and deeply personalized innovation coaching and learning program, supported by a global group of peers over 9-weeks, which can be customized as a bespoke corporate learning program.

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99.7% of Innovation Processes Miss These 3 Essential Steps

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99.7% of Innovation Processes Miss These 3 Essential Steps

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Congratulations! You developed and are using a best-in-class Innovation Process.

You start by talking to consumers, studying mega-trends, and scanning the globe for emerging technologies and disruptive offerings.

Once you find a problem and fall in love with it, you start dreaming and designing possible solutions. You imagine what could be, focused on creating as many ideas as possible. Then you shift to quality, prioritizing ideas that fit the company’s strategy and are potentially desirable, viable, and feasible.

With prioritized ideas in hand, you start iterating, an ongoing cycle of prototyping and testing until you confidently home in on a solution that consumers desire, is technically feasible, and financially viable.

But you don’t stop there! You know that ideas are easily copied by innovative business models are the source of lasting competitive advantage, so you think broadly and identify financial, operational, and strategic assumptions before testing each one like the innovation scientist you are.

If (and when) a solution survives all the phases and stage gates and emerges triumphant from the narrow end of the innovation process, there is a grand celebration. Because now, finally, it is ready to go to market and delight customers.

Right?

Wrong.

The solution’s journey has only just begun.

What lies ahead can be far more threatening and destructive than what lies behind.

Unless you planned for it by including these three steps in your innovation process.

1. Partnership with Sales

During testing, you ask consumers to give feedback on solutions. But do you ask Sales?

Salespeople spend most of their time outside the office and in stores, talking to customers (e.g., retailers, procurement), consumers, and users. They see and hear what competitors are doing, what is working, and what isn’t. And they will share all of this with you if you ask.

When I ask why innovation processes don’t include Sales, I hear two things (1) “it’s too early to talk to Sales” and (2) “they always tell us the same thing – it’s too expensive.”

First, if you have a concept (or two or three) with a 50/50 shot of going to market, call a few Salespeople and ask for their reactions. Nothing formal, no meeting required—just a gut reaction. And once you get that, ask when they’d like to talk again because their perspective is essential.

Second, “too expensive” should never be the end of the conversation. It’s one piece of feedback, ask follow-up questions to understand why it’s too expensive, then ask, “What else?” There’s always more, and some of it is useful. Plus, better to hear it now than months or years from now at the launch announcement.

2. Relay with Operations

Most companies have a process between the end of the innovation process and shipping the new offering. It’s where sourcing, manufacturing, shipping, inventory management, contracting, and many other crucial and practical decisions and plans are made.

Also, at most companies, the “transition” from the innovation process to the operational process is akin to chucking something over a wall. “Here you go,” Innovation seems to say, “we proved this will be a big business. Now go make it happen!”

Unfortunately, Supply Chain, Manufacturing, and everyone else affected usually stand on the other side of the wall, solution in hand, mouth agape, eyes wide, thinking, “Huh?”

Instead of an abrupt hand-off, the Innovation Process needs to identify when the relay-style hand-off starts, and Innovation and Operations run side-by-side, developing, adjusting, and honing the solution.

3. Hand-off to the Core Business

The hand-off to the Core Business is the most precarious of all moments for an innovation. The moment it leaves the Innovation team’s warm, nurturing, and forgiving nest and moves into the performance-driven reality of the Core Business.

The Core Business knows why it was added to the P&L, but they don’t understand how it came to be or why it is the way it is. And they definitely don’t love it as much as you do. All they see is a tiny, odd thing that requires lots of their already scarce resources to become something worthwhile.

Instead of depositing beloved solutions on the Core Business’ doorstep like an unwanted orphan, Innovation Process should ensure that the following three questions are answered and aligned to well before the hand-off occurs.

How material (revenue, profit) does a solution need to be to be welcomed into the Core Business?
Who runs the new business, and what else is on their plate?
What mechanisms are in place to ensure the Core Business supports the new solution during its tenuous first 1-3 years?

Create a process that creates innovation

Invention is something new.

Innovation is something new that creates value.

Innovation processes that focus solely on defining, designing, developing, and de-risking a solution run the risk of being Invention process because they result in something new but stop short of outlining how the innovation will be produced at scale, launched, scaled, and supported for years to come. You know, all those things required to create value.

BTW:

99.7% isn’t an exact number. In my experience, it’s 100%. But I wanted to leave some wiggle room.
I am 100% guilty of forgetting these three things.
If you’re trying to innovate for the first time in a loooooooong time, it’s ok to focus on the front end of innovation (define, design, develop, de-risk) and tackle these three things later. But trust me, you will need to tackle them later.

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Why is it important to innovate in 2023?

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Why is it important to innovate in 2023?

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

At ImagineNation™ we have just celebrated 10 years as a global innovation consultancy, learning, and coaching company. During this time, we’ve identified some of the common patterns that people demonstrate as a result of feeling uncomfortable, frozen, inert, stubborn, and confused and as a result, are resistant to innovation. Where many organizations, teams, and leaders appear to walk backward as if they are sleepwalking through this time in their lives.

At the same time, we know that innovation is transformational, and why, at this moment in time, it is more important than ever to create, invent and innovate. We also know that is crucial to be better balanced, resilient, and adaptive to grow and flow, survive and thrive, in today’s chaotic BANI environment. We also know exactly what transformative innovation involves, and how to enable and equip people to connect and collaborate in new ways to effect constructive and sustainable change in a world of unknowns.

Innovation is, in fact, the water of life!

Shaping the next normal

According to a recent article by McKinsey and Co “The future is not what it used to be: Thoughts on the shape of the next normal” the coronavirus crisis is a “world-changing event” which is forcing both the pace and scale of workplace innovation.

Stating that businesses are forced to do more with less and that many are finding better, simpler, less expensive, and faster ways to operate. Describing how innovative health systems, through necessity, constraints, and adversity have exploited this moment in time, to innovate:

“The urgency of addressing COVID-19 has also led to innovations in biotech, vaccine development, and the regulatory regimes that govern drug development so that treatments can be approved and tried faster. In many countries, health systems have been hard to reform; this crisis has made the difficulty much easier to achieve. The result should be a more resilient, responsive, and effective health system”.

We all know that it is impossible to know what will happen in the future and yet, that it is possible to consider and learn from the lessons of the past, both distant and recent. On that basis, it’s crucial to take time out, be hopeful, and positive, and think optimistically about the future. To be proactive and innovate to shape the kind of future we all wish to have, through making constructive and sustainable changes, that ultimately contribute to the common good.

Strategically deciding to innovate

Strategically deciding to innovate, is the first, mandatory, powerful, and impactful lever organizations, teams, leaders, and individuals can pull to effect constructive and sustainable change that enables people to execute and deliver real benefits:

Deal with, and find solutions to a world full of complex and competing social, civic, and political problems that are hard to solve and aren’t going away.
Better adapt, respond to, and be agile in fast-changing circumstances, uncertainty, instability, and to random and unexpected Black Swan events, like the global Covid-19 Pandemic and the Russian-Ukraine war.
Become human-centric to help people recover and manage their transition through the challenges of the global pandemic and enable them to exploit the range of accelerating technological advances in the digital age.
Develop corporate responsibility, sustainability, diversity, and inclusion strategies that are practical and can work and really deliver on their promises.
Compete by applying and experimenting with lean and agile start-up methodologies and take advantage of the opportunities and possibilities of the global entrepreneurship movement’s new models for leadership, collaboration, and experimentation.
Align to the range of changing workplace dynamics and trends, resulting from the pandemic, including WFH, the “soft resignation” and the demands of a hybrid workplace.
Shift individual, group, and collective consciousness towards collaboration and experimentation in ways that rebuild the trust that has been lost through incompetence, corruption, greed, and dishonesty.
Respond creatively to meet the increasingly diverse range of customer expectations and choices being made around value.

Important to innovate – three elements

To take advantage of living in a globalized world, where we are interconnected through technologies and values and where we have an interrelated structure of reality, we can:

Accept that innovation-led adaptation and growth are absolutely critical and develop targets and a willingness to invest in new scalable business models, achieve fast and effective developments, and launch processes to reflect these.
Invest in a coherent, time-risk balanced portfolio of initiatives and provide the resources to deliver them, at scale, strategically, to innovate to the right market, at the right price, at the right time, and through the most effective channels.
Adopt an ecosystem approach to adapt and grow by creating and capitalizing on both internal and external networks, and stakeholder management through developing workforce ecosystems – a structure that consists of interdependent actors, from within the organization and beyond, working to pursue both individual and collective goals.

Problem-solving, cultural change, and improving people’s lives

It is more important than ever to make innovation transformational, so that it delivers constructive, ethical, and sustainable change, by building on three critical successful abilities:

Seeing and sensing the real systemic problem or breakthrough opportunity:

What problem are we solving? And is there a customer who wants to pay to have that problem solved?
What problem are we solving for the customer? Who needs this?
What are the possibilities and opportunities available to us? And is there a customer who wants to pay to have this opportunity realized?
What are some of our strengths? What are some of the things we are doing well that we can build upon or exploit?

Shifting the culture:

Where are we today? Where do we want to be in the future?
What are our prevailing mindsets? How can we measure and contextualize their impact? What mindsets might we embrace to adapt and grow in an uncertain world?
How ready and receptive are we to really embrace change?
What do we need to unlearn and relearn to ensure our people are open-minded, hearted, and willed to embody and enact the desired change?
How engaged and passionate are our people in problem-solving?
How might we harness our people’s collective intelligence to solve problems and realize opportunities?

Aligning technologies, processes, artifacts, and behaviors as a holistic system:

What is our appetite for risk? How do we define risk in our context?
What type of innovation do we strategically want to plan for and engage in?
What old legacy technologies no longer serve your needs? What new technologies might you be willing to invest in for the future?
What disciplines are in place to ensure that people have a common understanding of the key processes and comply with managing them?
How are we ensuring that everyone is motivated and skilled to innovate?
How are we ensuring that people are acknowledged, rewarded, and organized to repeatedly innovate?
What are the key mindsets and behaviours that enable and equip people to embody and embrace repeatedly innovate and design solutions with the end customer in mind?

Become an adaptive and resilient difference maker

As many of us are aware, Toys R Us and Blockbuster were huge companies, that enjoyed massive success; however, this was all brought to an end due to their failure to innovate.

We can all avoid this fate by choosing to innovate and create constructive and sustainable change through:

Accepting and acknowledging that to survive and thrive in a BANI world, where necessity is still the mother of all invention, and the urgency to do this is more important than ever.
Identifying, understanding, and dealing with our own resistance to innovation, safely and proactively, and transforming resistance into resilience, to be adaptive and safely innovate.
Understanding where we are today and then assessing the gap to what we want to be in the future, and mitigating the risks of both closing the gap and leaving the gap wide open.
Enabling leaders, teams, and individuals to connect, explore, discover and navigate new ways of approaching and delivering commercially viable, value-adding, constructive and sustainable change, and outcomes.
Leveraging innovation to transform an organization, a business, the way people lead and team, to improve the quality of people’s lives in ways they appreciate and cherish.

“In order to transcend mere adequacy and make a mark of creative transcendence on the world, organizations need to stop walking backward, following a trail that has already been blazed. The motto of the British Special Air Service is, “Who dares, wins.” It is time for businesses to be bold, inspired, and look to the horizon. The next great innovation is out there. Will you have the guts to create it?”

Will you make a fundamental choice to innovate?

According to McKinsey and Co “The point is that where the world lands is a matter of choice – of countless decisions to be made by individuals, companies, governments, and institutions”.

Will you make a fundamental choice to use the current crisis to lead to a burst of innovation, productivity, resilience, and exploration in 2023, to take advantage of our connected world to create the constructive and sustainable changes we all want to have?

Or will you continue walking backward and sleepwalking through life, and fail to take advantage of this moment in time, to innovate, and continue life with the same thinking that is causing the current range of results, that many of us don’t want to have?

Find out more about our work at ImagineNation™

It is a blended and transformational change and learning program that will give you a deep understanding of the language, principles, and applications of an ecosystem focus, human-centric approach, and emergent structure (Theory U) to innovation, and upskill people and teams and develop their future fitness, within your unique innovation context. Find out more about our products and tools

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Navigating Disruption with Clarity

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Purpose as Your North Star

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

In a world defined by constant disruption, where technologies, markets, and customer needs shift at an unprecedented pace, organizations are often left feeling adrift. The old playbooks of strategic planning and forecasting are proving insufficient to navigate the volatility. In this environment of chronic uncertainty, I believe the most powerful anchor for any organization is a clearly defined and deeply embedded sense of purpose. Purpose, when authentically articulated and lived, acts as a North Star, providing clarity, inspiring action, and uniting a workforce to not just survive disruption, but to thrive within it.

Purpose is more than just a mission statement or a marketing slogan. It is the fundamental reason an organization exists beyond making a profit. It is the why behind the what. When a company’s purpose is its guiding light, it helps leaders and employees make better decisions, prioritize more effectively, and remain resilient in the face of setbacks. Purpose creates a shared sense of meaning that transcends individual roles and responsibilities, fostering a culture of trust and collective commitment. It gives people a reason to come to work every day that is bigger than a paycheck.

Navigating disruption with purpose requires a human-centered approach to strategy. It’s about moving from a rigid, top-down model to one that is driven by a shared sense of why. This enables organizations to adapt more quickly, as everyone is aligned on the ultimate goal, even if the path to get there needs to change. An organization with a strong purpose will find that its people are more engaged, more innovative, and more willing to go the extra mile. The key elements for leveraging purpose as a navigational tool include:

Authenticity: The purpose must be genuine and deeply ingrained in the company’s DNA, not an afterthought.
Clarity: The purpose must be simple, clear, and easy for every employee to understand and articulate.
Alignment: All business decisions, from product development to hiring, should be evaluated against the organization’s purpose.
Empowerment: Employees must be empowered to act on the purpose, not just told what it is. This fosters ownership and bottom-up innovation.
Storytelling: The organization’s purpose should be constantly reinforced through stories that illustrate its impact on customers, communities, and employees.

Case Study 1: Patagonia’s Environmental Activism as a Business Strategy

The Challenge: Competing in a Fast-Fashion Market with a Commitment to Sustainability

Patagonia, the outdoor apparel company, operates in a highly competitive market often driven by low prices and rapid consumption. The company’s business model, which prioritizes durability and environmental responsibility, stands in stark contrast to the fast-fashion industry. Navigating this landscape while remaining true to its values presented a constant challenge.

The Purpose-Driven Strategy:

Patagonia’s purpose is “We’re in business to save our home planet.” This isn’t just a slogan; it is the core of their business strategy. Every decision, from material sourcing to marketing campaigns, is evaluated through this lens. When faced with disruption, such as a downturn in the economy, Patagonia doesn’t compromise on its purpose. Instead, it doubles down, knowing that its loyal customer base values this commitment. For example, during Black Friday, a time when most retailers encourage consumption, Patagonia famously ran a campaign telling customers, “Don’t Buy This Jacket.” This counterintuitive approach reinforced their purpose and created an even stronger connection with their customers. Their commitment to their purpose has allowed them to attract top talent, build a fiercely loyal community, and remain profitable while staying true to their core values.

The Results:

Patagonia has not only survived but thrived by leveraging its purpose as a navigational tool. It has demonstrated that a strong, authentic purpose is a powerful source of competitive advantage and resilience. The company’s clear “why” has enabled it to make bold decisions that might seem risky from a traditional business perspective, but which ultimately resonate deeply with its customers and employees. This case study shows that a purpose-driven approach provides a clear framework for navigating disruption, allowing a company to stand out and build a sustainable business in the long term.

Key Insight: An authentic and unwavering purpose can act as a powerful differentiator and a source of competitive advantage, enabling an organization to make bold, values-aligned decisions that build long-term loyalty and resilience.

Case Study 2: Microsoft’s Cultural Transformation under Satya Nadella

The Challenge: A Stagnant Culture and Missed Opportunities in a Rapidly Changing Tech Landscape

In the early 2010s, Microsoft was widely perceived as a company that had lost its way. Its culture was siloed and competitive, and it had missed key shifts in the tech industry, such as the rise of mobile computing. The company was in a state of internal turmoil, lacking a unified vision to guide it through the ongoing disruption. New leadership was needed to redefine the company’s direction and reignite innovation.

The Purpose-Driven Strategy:

When Satya Nadella became CEO, he didn’t start with a new product strategy; he started with purpose. He re-framed Microsoft’s mission to “empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.” This purpose was intentionally broad and human-centered. It was a clear departure from the company’s past focus on “putting a computer on every desk.” This new North Star guided every subsequent strategic decision, from embracing open-source software and cloud computing to acquiring LinkedIn and GitHub. The purpose served as a unifying force, helping different business units collaborate and innovate together. It allowed the company to pivot into new markets with a clear sense of direction, moving beyond its traditional software dominance.

The Results:

Nadella’s purpose-driven leadership led to a remarkable cultural and business renaissance at Microsoft. The company’s stock price soared, and it regained its position as a global technology leader. By using a clear and human-centered purpose as its guide, Microsoft was able to navigate the complex and disruptive tech landscape with newfound clarity and agility. This case study demonstrates how a renewed sense of purpose, when effectively communicated and integrated into the culture, can act as a powerful engine for change, enabling a large organization to reinvent itself and thrive in a period of intense disruption.

Key Insight: Reclaiming and re-framing an organization’s purpose can serve as the most effective catalyst for a large-scale cultural transformation and business revitalization.

Making Purpose Your Guiding Light

In an era of relentless disruption, a clearly defined purpose is no longer a luxury—it is an essential strategic asset. It provides the clarity needed to make tough decisions, the inspiration required to foster innovation, and the resilience necessary to weather any storm. As leaders, our role is not just to set a course, but to articulate a compelling “why” that will serve as our collective North Star. By putting purpose at the center of our strategy, we can move from being passive observers of change to active agents of a future we are all proud to create.

Extra Extra: Because innovation is all about change, Braden Kelley’s human-centered change methodology and tools are the best way to plan and execute the changes necessary to support your innovation and transformation efforts — all while literally getting everyone all on the same page for change. Find out more about the methodology and tools, including the book Charting Change by following the link. Be sure and download the TEN FREE TOOLS while you’re here.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Making Innovation the Way We Do Business (easy as ABC)

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Making Innovation the Way We Do Business (easy as ABC)

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

“We need to be more innovative.”

How many times have you said or heard that? It’s how most innovation efforts start. It’s a statement that reflects leaders’ genuine desire to return to the “good ol’ days” when the company routinely created and launched new products and enjoyed the publicity and growth that followed.

But what does it mean to be more innovative?

Innovation’s ABCs

A is for Architecture

Architecture includes most of the elements people think of when they start the work to become more innovative – strategy, structure, processes, metrics, governance, and incentives.

Each of these elements answers fundamental questions:

Strategy: Why is innovation important? How does it contribute to our overall strategy?
Structure: Who does the work of innovation?
Process: How is the work done?
Metrics: How will we know when we’re successful? How will we measure progress?
Governance: Who makes decisions? How and when are decisions made?
Incentives: Why should people invest their time, money, and political capital? How will they be rewarded?

When it comes to your business, you can answer all these questions. The same is true if you’re serious about innovation. If you can’t answer the questions, you have work to do. If you don’t want to do the work, then you don’t want to be innovative. You want to look innovative*.

B is for Behavior

Innovation isn’t an idea problem. It’s a leadership problem.

Leaders that talk about innovation, delegate it to subordinates and routinely pull resources from innovation to “shore up” current operations don’t want to be innovative. They want to look innovative.

Leaders who roll up their sleeves and work alongside innovation teams, ask questions and listen with open minds, and invest and protect innovation resources want to be innovative.

To be fair, it’s incredibly challenging to be a great leader of both innovation and operations. It’s the equivalent of writing equally well with your right and left hands. But it is possible. More importantly, it’s essential.

C is for Culture

Culture is invisible, pervasive, and personal. It is also the make-or-break factor for innovation because it surrounds innovation architecture, teams, and leaders.

Culture can expand to encourage and support exploration, creativity, and risk-taking. Or it can constrict, unleashing antibodies that swarm, suffocate, and kill anything that threatens the status quo.

Trying to control or change culture is like trying to hold water in your fist. But if you let go just a bit, create the right conditions, and wait patiently, change is possible.

Easy as 123

The most common mistake executives make in the pursuit of being “more innovative” is that they focus on only A or only B or only C. But, as I always tell my clients, the answer is “and, not or.”

Start with Architecture because it’s logical, rational, and produces tangible outputs like org charts, process flows, and instruction manuals filled with templates and tools. Architecture is comforting because it helps us know what to do and how.
Use Architecture to encourage Behavior because the best way to learn something is to do it. With Architecture in place (but well before it’s finished), bring leaders into the work – talking to customers, sharing their ideas, and creating prototypes. When leaders do the work of innovation, they quickly realize what’s possible (and what’s not) and are open to learning how to engage (behave) in a way that supports innovation.
Leverage Architecture and Behavior to engage Culture by creating the artifacts, rituals, and evidence that innovation can happen in your company, is happening and will continue to happen. As people see “innovation” evolve from a buzzword to a small investment to “the way we do business,” their skepticism will fade, and their support will grow.

Just like the Jackson 5 said

ABC, It’s easy a 123

Architecture, behavior, culture – they’re all essential to enabling an innovation capability that repeatedly creates new revenue.

And while starting with architecture, building new leadership behaviors, and investing until the culture changes isn’t easy, it’s the 123 steps required to “be more innovative.”

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

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Neuroscience-Backed Strategies for Embracing Disruption

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The Brain on Change

Neuroscience-Backed Strategies for Embracing Disruption

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

In today’s hyper-accelerated world, the only constant is change. Yet, for all our talk of agility and transformation, up to 70% of organizational change initiatives still stumble or outright fail. Why? Because we often overlook the most powerful and complex component in the equation: the human brain. We mandate, we communicate, we train, but we rarely design for how the brain actually processes disruption.

Our brains are exquisitely wired for survival. They crave predictability, efficiency, and safety. When faced with the unknown, the uncertain, or a perceived loss of control, our ancient limbic system – specifically the amygdala – fires up, triggering a “threat response.” This isn’t a conscious choice; it’s a primal, neurobiological reaction that floods our system with stress hormones, impairs rational thought, and leads directly to resistance, disengagement, and even outright rebellion. Trying to force change against this innate wiring is like trying to drive a car with the brakes on.

But what if we could shift our approach? What if we could harness the incredible power of neuroplasticity – the brain’s lifelong ability to rewire itself and form new connections – to cultivate a workforce not just tolerant of change, but genuinely adaptable and innovative? The burgeoning field of neuro-leadership offers a compelling, science-backed roadmap for doing just that.

The SCARF Model: A Compass for Navigating the Inner Landscape of Change

At the heart of understanding the brain on change lies Dr. David Rock’s insightful SCARF model. This framework identifies five key social domains that strongly influence whether our brains perceive a situation as a threat or a reward:

Status: Our sense of relative importance or standing. A perceived reduction in status can be deeply threatening.
Certainty: Our need for predictability and clear expectations about the future. Ambiguity is a major threat trigger.
Autonomy: Our sense of control over our own lives and work. Being told what to do without input can feel disempowering.
Relatedness: Our need for social connection, belonging, and trust. Feeling isolated or excluded is a significant threat.
Fairness: Our perception of equitable exchanges and just treatment. Injustice triggers strong threat responses.

When these domains are threatened during a period of organizational change, resistance is a natural, albeit often unconscious, outcome. Conversely, by consciously designing change initiatives that bolster these elements, leaders can foster psychological safety and activate the brain’s reward pathways, making people more receptive and engaged.

Neuroscience-Backed Strategies for a Human-Centered Transformation

Translating this understanding into actionable strategies is where the real power lies:

Cultivate Unwavering Psychological Safety: This is the bedrock. For true embrace of disruption, people must feel safe to voice concerns, ask “dumb” questions, experiment, and even fail without fear of retribution. Leaders must actively model vulnerability, admit what they don’t know, and create open forums for dialogue. When the amygdala is calm, the prefrontal cortex – our center for rational thought, creativity, and problem-solving – can engage fully. A culture that embraces “failing fast” subtly reinforces safety around risk-taking.
Break Down Change into Digestible Increments (and Celebrate Each Bite): Large, amorphous changes can overwhelm the brain, triggering an “energy drain” threat response. Our brains seek efficiency, and tackling a massive, ill-defined task feels incredibly inefficient. Instead, break down the transformation into smaller, clearly defined, and achievable steps. Each successful completion, no matter how minor, triggers a dopamine release – the brain’s natural reward chemical – reinforcing the new behavior and building momentum. This consistent positive reinforcement literally helps to hardwire new neural pathways, making the desired behaviors more automatic over time.
Maximize Autonomy and Empower Co-Creation: Nothing triggers a threat response faster than a feeling of powerlessness. Mandating change from the top down, without input, crushes individual autonomy. Instead, involve employees in the design and implementation of the change. Empower teams to explore solutions, define processes, and even identify problems. This sense of ownership not only vastly increases buy-in but also taps into the collective intelligence and creativity of your workforce, activating the brain’s reward centers associated with competence and control.
Strengthen Relatedness and Build Community: Humans are profoundly social creatures; our survival historically depended on strong group bonds. During periods of uncertainty, social isolation is a major threat. Foster collaboration, build strong cross-functional teams, and create frequent opportunities for people to connect, share experiences, and support one another. Initiatives that reinforce a sense of “we’re in this together” mitigate threat responses and build the trust essential for navigating disruption.
Prioritize Transparency and Reduce Ambiguity (Where Feasible): While complete certainty is a mirage in a disruptive world, leaders can significantly reduce the brain’s cognitive load – and thus its threat response – by providing clear, consistent, and transparent communication. Explain the “why” behind the change, the anticipated outcomes, and the evolving roadmap. Even when details are uncertain, communicate what is known and what is still being figured out. This honest approach helps the brain create a clearer mental map, conserving precious cognitive energy that can then be redirected towards adapting to the change itself.

Case Study 1: Transforming a Legacy Financial Institution

A venerable financial institution, facing existential threats from nimble fintech startups, embarked on a sweeping digital transformation. Their initial top-down directives to adopt new technologies were met with palpable fear, resistance, and an alarming spike in employee turnover. Recognizing the human cost, the executive team pivoted, bringing in a change consultancy that prioritized neuroscience-backed approaches.

Instead of simply rolling out new software, they launched “Digital Reimagination Labs.” These were safe spaces where employees from all levels and departments could experiment with emerging technologies without fear of judgment or failure. This directly addressed Status (by valuing their input and learning) and Autonomy (by giving them control over their exploration). Regular “Future of Finance” town halls, led by transparent executives, directly confronted anxieties about job displacement by outlining new skill development programs and career pathways (boosting Certainty and Fairness). Small, cross-functional “Agile Pods” were formed to prototype new digital products, giving members immense Autonomy and fostering strong Relatedness. Each successful pilot was widely celebrated, reinforcing positive neural pathways.

The transformation was profound. Employee engagement soared, internal innovation flourished, and the institution successfully launched several cutting-edge digital products, not just staving off disruption but reclaiming market leadership. The shift was less about technology implementation and more about a deliberate rewiring of the organizational culture.

Case Study 2: Agile Adoption in a Global Manufacturing Giant

A global manufacturing powerhouse aimed to implement agile methodologies across its product development divisions to accelerate innovation and time-to-market. The deeply entrenched, hierarchical “waterfall” processes had created a culture where rigidity was king. Engineers and project managers, accustomed to meticulous planning, saw agile as a chaotic threat to their expertise and stability.

The leadership team, informed by neuroscientific principles, recognized that simply mandating agile would fail. They began by re-framing agile not as a radical overthrow, but as an evolution that would empower teams and lead to more satisfying, impactful work (appealing to Status and Autonomy). They introduced agile incrementally, starting with small, volunteer pilot teams in non-critical areas. This “small batch” approach significantly reduced the perceived Certainty threat. “Agile Coaches” were introduced, not as process police, but as supportive mentors and facilitators, fostering strong Relatedness and psychological safety. Critically, regular “Lessons Learned & Wins” sessions openly discussed challenges and celebrated every small success, from a smoother stand-up meeting to a completed sprint. This consistent positive reinforcement (dopamine hit) and normalization of learning from mistakes helped to literally rewire the perception of agile from a threat to an opportunity.

Within two years, over 70% of product development teams had adopted agile practices, leading to a 30% reduction in time-to-market and a dramatic improvement in cross-functional collaboration. The success wasn’t just about new processes; it was about intelligently engaging the human brain.

The Path Forward: Leading with the Brain in Mind

Embracing disruption is no longer just a strategic imperative; it’s a profound challenge to our very biology. By consciously applying neuroscience-backed strategies, leaders can move beyond simply managing change to truly cultivating a human-centered culture of continuous adaptation and innovation. It’s about creating environments where the brain feels safe, empowered, and rewarded, allowing our incredible human capacity for creativity, collaboration, and resilience to truly flourish. The future, without a doubt, belongs to those who understand and leverage the brain on change.

Image credit: Gemini

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Leadership Lessons from Industry Disruptors

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Navigating the Future

Leadership Lessons from Industry Disruptors

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

In our volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world, disruption isn’t an occasional event; it’s the constant drumbeat of progress. Every sector, from finance to healthcare, is ripe for transformation, and the organizations leading this charge—the true industry disruptors—offer invaluable lessons. As a human-centered change and innovation thought leader, I constantly examine what sets these trailblazers apart. It extends far beyond pioneering technology or clever business models; it’s fundamentally about a distinct style of leadership that empowers people, fosters relentless innovation, and fearlessly navigates the unknown. These lessons are not just for startups; they are essential for any established leader aiming to not merely survive, but truly thrive and shape the future.

Cultivating a Visionary, Purpose-Driven North Star

Industry disruptors are rarely driven by profit alone. Instead, they are propelled by a powerful, often audacious, purpose-driven vision that transcends conventional financial goals. Leaders of these organizations articulate a compelling future state – perhaps solving a societal problem, democratizing access, or creating an entirely new category of experience. This vision acts as an unwavering North Star, inspiring employees, attracting mission-aligned talent, and deeply resonating with customers. It provides immense resilience during inevitable setbacks and guides every strategic decision, ensuring sustained momentum toward a transformative objective.

“Disruptors are propelled by a powerful, often audacious, purpose-driven vision that transcends conventional financial goals.”

Relentless, Empathetic Customer Obsession

While many companies pay lip service to customer-centricity, disruptors embody it as an absolute obsession. Their leaders cultivate an organizational culture where understanding and even anticipating customer needs—often before customers themselves can articulate them—is paramount. This goes far beyond traditional market research. It involves deep empathy mapping, immersing teams in the customer journey, conducting ethnographic studies, and maintaining iterative product development cycles based on continuous feedback. They aren’t just selling a product or service; they’re designing an experience around the user’s authentic desires and pain points, willing to completely redesign fundamental aspects of their offerings if it improves the customer’s life.

Embracing Intelligent Experimentation and Learning from Failure

Innovation is rarely a linear process; it’s inherently iterative and often messy. Leaders of disruptive companies recognize that failure is not the opposite of success, but a crucial stepping stone. They actively create environments where intelligent experimentation is encouraged, and setbacks are meticulously analyzed as valuable learning opportunities, not causes for blame or punishment. This requires building psychological safety, de-risking rapid prototyping, and embedding processes that enable quick pivots based on data and emerging insights. They model a “test, learn, and iterate rapidly” mindset, understanding that speed of learning often outpaces speed of execution in uncharted territories.

Case Study 1: Netflix – Pioneering the Streaming Revolution

Netflix’s evolution from a DVD-by-mail service to a global streaming and content production juggernaut is a definitive case study in disruptive leadership. Under Reed Hastings’ guidance, the company didn’t just adapt; it courageously **cannibalized its own highly successful business model**. Their audacious strategic pivot into streaming, despite significant initial investment and risk, demonstrated profound foresight into shifting consumer behavior and technological trends. They understood the future was digital, on-demand, and personalized.

Key leadership lessons from Netflix include: a **visionary long-term view** that anticipated the death of physical media; a **radical culture of “freedom and responsibility”** that empowered employees with unparalleled autonomy and expected peak performance, famously codified in their culture deck; and a **relentless, almost scientific, focus on data-driven decision-making** regarding content acquisition, personalization algorithms, and user experience. They weren’t afraid to make bold, initially unpopular internal decisions (like the Qwikster split, though later reversed) in pursuit of their long-term vision, always prioritizing customer experience and future growth over short-term revenue. Their willingness to “break” what was working to build what would ultimately dominate the entertainment landscape is a hallmark of their leadership.

Key Takeaway: Bold visionary leadership, a culture of high freedom and responsibility, and deep data obsession enable successful self-disruption and market transformation.

Empowering Autonomous, Cross-Functional Teams

Disruptive leaders understand that genuine innovation rarely flourishes within rigid, hierarchical silos. Instead, they actively flatten organizational structures, decentralizing decision-making authority and delegating significant power to small, agile, autonomous, cross-functional teams. These teams are given clear strategic objectives but significant freedom and ownership over how to achieve them. This structure fosters remarkable agility, enhances accountability, and cultivates a stronger sense of purpose and psychological ownership among team members. The result is an accelerated pace of innovation and a superior ability to respond rapidly to market changes. It’s a shift from leading with control to leading with context and trust.

Fostering a Culture of Perpetual Learning and Adaptability

The unrelenting pace of technological and societal change means that yesterday’s winning formula might be tomorrow’s obsolescence. Disruptive leaders intrinsically understand this, and they cultivate an organizational culture of perpetual learning—at both the individual and systemic levels. This involves continuous investment in skill development and reskilling, championing knowledge sharing across teams, and nurturing a strong growth mindset throughout the organization. Critically, these leaders embody adaptability themselves, demonstrating a willingness to pivot strategies, embrace new technologies, challenge long-held assumptions, and even admit when initial approaches were wrong. They build learning organizations, not just performing ones.

Case Study 2: Tesla – Redefining Automotive, Energy, and Manufacturing

Under the visionary, albeit often controversial, leadership of Elon Musk, Tesla has done far more than simply build electric cars. It has fundamentally challenged and disrupted the automotive industry’s traditional manufacturing, sales, and service models, while simultaneously forging a path into the sustainable energy sector with integrated solar and battery solutions. This represents disruption across multiple, deeply entrenched industries.

Key leadership lessons from Tesla include: an **audacious, almost impossible, mission-driven vision** to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy, which acts as a powerful magnet for passionate, top-tier talent; an **extreme bias for action and rapid iteration**, even in hardware and complex manufacturing processes, exemplified by continuous over-the-air software updates to vehicles and relentless factory optimizations; and a bold **vertical integration strategy** that grants unparalleled control over the entire value chain, from battery production to direct-to-consumer sales and a proprietary charging infrastructure. Musk’s leadership, while intense, is defined by a singular, unwavering focus on the long-term mission, an unparalleled willingness to push technological boundaries to their absolute limit, and an acceptance of intense scrutiny and immense risk in pursuit of a truly transformative future. He cultivates a culture of urgency, engineering excellence, and seemingly impossible ambition.

Key Takeaway: An audacious, mission-driven vision combined with extreme bias for action, vertical integration, and a culture of urgency can drive multi-industry disruption.

Leading with Unwavering Transparency and Authenticity

In environments characterized by rapid change and inherent uncertainty, trust is not merely beneficial; it’s foundational. Leaders of disruptive organizations often operate with remarkably high degrees of transparency and authenticity. They openly share both triumphs and setbacks, strategic challenges and emerging opportunities, fostering a deeper sense of psychological safety within the organization. This builds profound credibility, encourages open communication, facilitates constructive feedback, and helps align every individual around the core mission and strategic pivots. When leaders are genuine and vulnerable, it empowers employees to bring their full selves to work and contribute freely to the shared journey of innovation.

Conclusion: The Imperative for Disruptive Leadership

The transformative lessons emanating from industry disruptors are crystal clear: the future of leadership is not about maintaining the status quo or simply adapting to change; it’s about courageously initiating and forging new paths. It demands a visionary purpose, relentless customer obsession, a deep commitment to intelligent experimentation and continuous learning, the empowerment of autonomous teams, and unwavering transparency and authenticity. These aren’t abstract ideals solely applicable to burgeoning startups; they are concrete, actionable principles essential for any established organization seeking to remain relevant, innovative, and impactful in an era of constant transformation. By deliberately embracing and cultivating these leadership qualities, we can shift from being disrupted to becoming the disruptors, actively shaping tomorrow’s industries today.

Extra Extra: Futurology is not fortune telling. Futurists use a scientific approach to create their deliverables, but a methodology and tools like those in FutureHacking™ can empower anyone to engage in futurology themselves.

Image credit: Pixabay

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3 Ways to Get Customer Insights without Talking to Customers

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3 Ways to Get Customer Insights without Talking to Customers

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Most of my advice to leaders who want to use innovation to grow their businesses boils down to two things*:

Talk (and listen) to customers
Do something

But what if you don’t want to talk to customers?

After all, talking to customers can be scary because you don’t know what they’ll say. It can be triggering if they say something mean about your product, your business, or even you as a person. It can be draining, especially if you’re an introvert.

Plus, there are so many ways to avoid talking to customers – Send a survey, hire a research firm to write a report, invoke the famous Steve Jobs quote about never doing customer research.

Isn’t it just better to stay tucked away in the office, read reports, state opinions as if they are facts (those opinions are based on experience, after all), and make decisions?

Nope.

It is not better. It is also not safer, easier, or more efficient.

To make the best decisions, you need the best data, which comes from your customers.

But that doesn’t mean you need to talk to them to get it.

The best data

The best data helps you understand why your customers do what they do. This is why Jobs to be Done is such a powerful tool – it uncovers the emotional and social Jobs to be Done that drive our behavior and choices (functional Jobs to be Done are usually used to justify our choices).

But discovering Jobs to be Done typically requires you to talk to people, build rapport and trust in a one-on-one conversation, and ask Why? dozens of times so surface emotional and social JTBD.

Luckily, there are other ways to find Jobs to be Done that don’t require you to become an unlicensed therapist.

Observe your customers

Go where your customers are (or could be) experiencing the problem you hope to solve and try to blend in. Watch what people are doing and what they’re not doing. Notice whether people are alone or with others (and who those others are – kids, partners, colleagues, etc.). Listen to the environment (is it loud or quiet? If there’s noise, what kind of noise?) and to what people are saying to each other.

Be curious. Write down everything you’re observing. Wonder why and write down your hypotheses. Share your observations with your colleagues. Ask them to go out, observe, wonder, and share. Together you may discover answers or work up the courage to have a conversation.

Quick note – Don’t be creepy about this. Don’t lurk behind clothing racks, follow people through stores, peep through windows, linger too long, or wear sunglasses, a trench coat, and a fedora on a 90-degree day, so you look inconspicuous. If people start giving you weird looks, find a new place to people-watch.

Observe yourself

Humans are fascinating, and because you are a human, you are fascinating. So, observe yourself when you’re experiencing the problem you’re hoping to solve. Notice where you are, who is with you, the environment, and how you feel. Watch what you do and don’t do. Wonder why you chose one solution over another (or none).

Be curious. Write down everything you did, saw, and felt and why. Ask your colleagues to do the same. Share your observations with your colleagues and find points of commonality and divergence, then get curious all over again.

Quick note – This only works if you have approximately the same demographic and psychographic profiles and important and unsatisfied Jobs to be Done of your target customers.

Be your customer

What if your business solves a problem that can’t be easily observed? What if you don’t have the problem that your business is trying to solve?

Become your customer (and observe yourself).

Several years ago, I worked with a client that made adult incontinence products. I couldn’t observe people using their products, and I do not have important (or unsatisfied) Jobs to be Done that the products can solve.

So, for one day, I became a customer. I went to Target and purchased their product. I went home, wore, and used the product. I developed a deep empathy for the customer and wrote down roughly 1 million ways to innovate the product and experience.

Quick note – Depending on what’s required to “be your customer,” you may need to give people a heads up. My husband was incredibly patient and understanding but also a little concerned on the day of the experiment.

It’s about what you learn, not how you learn it

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking there is one best way to get insights. I’m 100% guilty (one-on-one conversations are a hill I have died on multiple times).

Ultimately, when it comes to innovation and decision-making, the more important thing is having, believing, and using insights into why customers do what they do and want what they want. How you get those insights is an important but secondary consideration.

* Each of those two things contains A TON of essential stuff that must be done the right way at the right time otherwise, they won’t work, but we’ll get into those things in another article

Image Credit: Pixabay

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