Disruption and Transformation

This article is part of our Mentor-Coach Reading List series. Join the mailing list to receive this and more.

The focus of this series is on different perspectives for rethinking disruption and transformation.

SETTING THE SCENE

The reason why it is so difficult for existing firms to capitalize on disruptive innovations is that their processes and their business model that make them good at the existing business actually make them bad at competing for the disruption. - Clayton M. Christensen

Disruption is a process, not an event, and innovations can only be disruptive relative to something else. - Clayton M. Christensen

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

  • What is the relationship between growth and transformation?

  • Why are some of the world’s most successful companies able to stay ahead of disruption, adopting and implementing innovative strategies, while others struggle?

  • How do smart companies involve front-line employees, experts, suppliers, customers, entrepreneurs, and even competitors?

  • What mindset is needed by companies dedicated to perpetual innovation and relentless experimentation?

Happy reading and stay curious!

Here is more information about the Series 15 selection of books.

Disrupt Disruption: How to Decode the Future, Disrupt Your Industry, and Transform Your Business (New Degree Press, January 2023) by Pascal Finette. Offers a holistic view of the dynamics of disruption. Drawing on hundreds of exclusive interviews with successful innovators and leaders of incumbent organisations that have weathered paradigm shifts in their industries, Finette provides a perspective-shifting, practical framework to support a new understanding of disruption.

Intended Consequences: How to Build Market-Leading Companies with Responsible Innovation (McGraw Hill, January 2022) by Hemant Taneja and Kevin Maney. A pioneering venture capitalist provides an actionable framework for founders and executives to create innovative, enduring companies built for growth and for societal good. A company’s mindset—its intent to do good, avoid harmful consequences, and innovate responsibly—is not enough. That mindset must be supported by a business model, a mechanism that leaders must intentionally and proactively build along with the company from the ground up, one that incentivizes and rewards the organization for fulfilling its intentions. Companies need a new set of KCIs, or key consequence indicators, that measure factors such as its impact on customers’ energy consumption, whether its product is being used equally across socioeconomic groups, or if it is actually solving the social problem it is addressing. Not only is this the right thing to do—increasingly, it is what customers, employees, and shareholders demand of business.

The Great Digital Transformation: Reimagining the Future of Customer Interactions (Forbes Books, December 2022) by Gerard Szatvanyi. In his pragmatic way, Szatvanyi turns the complicated topic of digital transformation into easy-to-digest segments. What does it take to digitally transform? Szatvanyi is aware of the obstacles, and he doesn’t shy away from tough topics in the retail space, including the challenges surrounding stores and misunderstandings about remote work. Rather, in an approachable “around the fireplace” style, he extends his hand and invites readers to sit back with him and dream. After all, with the technologies available today, the possibilities are nearly endless. Szatvanyi points out that the starting line is not a budget review or the development of a to-do list. Rather, it’s a thinking exercise; a conversation, if you will, about what could be.

Going on Offense: A Leader's Playbook for Perpetual Innovation (Ideapress Publishing, August 2023) by Behnam Tabrizi, a world-renowned expert in Transformation, best-selling author, and an award-winning teacher, scholar and global advisor. He has served on the teaching faculty of Organizational Transformation at Stanford University and its executive programs for the past 25 years. How do the most innovative and agile companies develop a "winning mindset" that runs throughout the entire organization? This book explores the key ingredients that fuel the mindset of companies dedicated to perpetual innovation and relentless experimentation. Based on a comprehensive seven-year study from Stanford University, it provides an insider view into the transformative drivers of success displayed in 26 innovative organizations--including industry giants like Apple, Tesla, Amazon, Microsoft, and Starbucks--along with actionable advice on how to replicate this transformation.

Open Strategy: Mastering Disruption from Outside the C-Suite (The MIT Press, October 2021) by Christian Stadler is Professor of Strategic Management at Warwick Business School at Warwick University. Julia Hautz is Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Innsbruck. Kurt Matzler is Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Innsbruck, Academic Director of the Executive MBA program at MCI in Innsbruck, and Partner at the international management consulting firm IMP. Stephan Friedrich von den Eichen is Managing Partner at IMP and Professor of Business Model Innovation at the University of Bremen. How smart companies are opening up strategic initiatives to involve front-line employees, experts, suppliers, customers, entrepreneurs, and even competitors. Introduces tools for each of the three stages of strategy-making: idea generation, plan formulation, and implementation. These are digital tools (including strategy contests), which allow the widest participation; hybrid digital/in-person tools (including a “nightmare competitor challenge”); a workshop tool that gamifies the business model development process; and tools that help companies implement and sustain open strategy efforts.

The Disruption Mindset: Why Some Organizations Transform While Others Fail (Ideapress Publishing, September 2019) by Charlene Li, the founder and CEO of Altimeter Group. “Disruption doesn’t create growth; instead, growth creates disruption.” Growth is always hard, and disruptive growth is exponentially harder. It requires companies to make tough decisions in the face of daunting uncertainties: Should we bet our company’s future on next-generation customers or today’s reliable ones? Should we abandon our current business model for an entirely new one? Making bold changes demands bold leadership and, often, massive cultural transformation. Li lays out how to do so by focusing on three elements: a strategy designed to meet the needs of future customers; leadership that creates a movement to drive and sustain transformation; and a culture that thrives on disruptive change.

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