Beyond Disruption: Innovate and Achieve Growth without Displacing Industries, Companies, or Jobs

W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne challenge the prevalent disruption ideology and explain that the urge to disrupt an industry isn't the sole path to innovation. This perspective builds upon their initial landmark book, Blue Ocean Strategy. In that book they underscored that innovating is first and foremost the proactive process of creating new markets fueled by the ability to observe trends and changes across existing market boundaries. As a result, they encouraged aspiring innovators to seek inspiration by looking at what’s going on across alternative industries, across strategic groups within industries, across the chain of buyers, across complementary product and service offerings, across the functional or emotional appeal to buyers, and across time. Thus, in both Blue Ocean Strategy and subsequently in Blue Ocean Shift, they already made clear that innovation doesn't necessarily equate to disruption. Beyond Disruption furthers this premise by offering a two-fold exploration. First, it provides a comprehensive view of how innovation can be conceived, a topic addressed in the first five chapters. Second, it delves into the constructive potential of non-disruptive creation, a subject detailed in chapters six through ten.The overall landscape for conceptualizing innovation can be understood through three distinct approaches to building new markets:1- Disruptive innovation generates new markets within existing industry boundaries. It involves challenging established competitors to displace or replace them, and operating under the assumption that success is a zero-sum game. The goal is to capture market share from incumbents within a relatively fixed market, often disregarding the societal consequences that may arise, such as job losses.2- A blue ocean strategy creates new markets across existing industry boundaries. Instead of competing directly with rivals, this approach focuses on expanding the market by composing new spaces from existing ones. For example, Cirque du Soleil succeeded not by eliminating other circuses but by blending elements of circus and theater, appealing not only to circus enthusiasts but also to theater lovers.3- Nondisruptive creation involves building new markets outside existing industry boundaries. This approach goes beyond simply looking across industry boundaries and considers a broader societal purpose. It recognizes that industry boundaries should not limit the scope of an enterprise or industry, and that innovation should take into account potential societal consequences. Nondisruptive creation implies not just expanding the pie, but also broadening your perspective to align economic and social good, and ““bring economic good and social good closer to moving in lockstep.”From a non-disruptive creation standpoint, "changing the world" primarily involves identifying unresolved problems and untapped areas with a positive intention, and serving people who have been marginalized by existing market configurations. Some examples mentioned by the authors include Arunachalam Muruganantham's delivering sanitary pad-making machine for women in rural India, Mohammad Yunus' microfinance initiative, Sesame Street's preschool edutainment, GoPro's impact on the action-camera industry, or Kickstarter's provision of capital to numerous innovators. Approaching innovation from a non-disruptive standpoint makes you think bigger than only thinking in terms of disruption and is based on the idea that our surroundings offer limitless potential if we actively seek it out.Identifying opportunities for nondisruptive creation requires a "mental flip;" in other words, you need to realize that you have the power to design a new chessboard, instead of accepting the existing structure of our environment The example of Square/Block shows that the company didn't destroy the credit card industry but instead offered previously inaccessible capabilities to smaller businesses.So how can you identify opportunities that lead to nondisruptive innovation? Unexplored issues and emerging problems can be exposed through direct experience, empathic observation, or active scouting. The nondisruptive creative mindset begins with asking "what if" and embracing the can-do attitude of "why not?" During this process, it is essential to analyze the economic and ideological assumptions that have hidden these opportunities. Then, you may discover that the state of an industry reflects a perspective on the world as it was, rather than what it could become or even as it is currently unfolding. Established players tend to view the world through their internal lenses rather than through the eyes of the real people living in it. For example, creating a loan company for international students might not have made sense in the 1980s, but it did in 2007 when Prodigy was started by Cameron Stevens, an INSEAD student.Is nondisruptive creation easy? No, just like any other form of innovation. Pundits will always provide reasons why you might fail, and as a nondisruptive creator, you may even list out those reasons, as Jim McKelvey, the co-founder of Square, did with its 140 items. Nevertheless, you will strive if you understand the potential value of what you want to do for people before it becomes a market reality.A quick reader might think that nondisruptive creation sounds less ambitious than the idea of disruptive innovation. It’s only because the latter has invaded the innovation discourse since the 1990s as a marketing rallying cry. The truth of the matter, though, is that it doesn’t even accurately describe the historical occurrence of innovations. "Nondisruptive creation" has actually been a far more important model and has brought about significant positive changes in the world in a seamless or progressive manner throughout history. For instance, when George Eastman popularized photography, he empowered millions of individuals, and when Ford introduced the Model T, he granted access to motor vehicles to millions, democratizing a means of transportation that was previously limited to a privileged few. In other words, "nondisruptive creation" is far more comprehensive than "disruptive innovation." In reality, because it starts with known factors (an established market with recognized needs and a known size), disruptive innovation is in actuality a conservative and reactive vision of innovation. I would also contend that when disruptive innovation occurs, the alleged disruptor may not even be the destruction agent per se. Disrupted establishments are, because by neglecting the changes occurring around them and failing to refocus their internal resources to adapt, they have betrayed the communities that trusted them. As reminded by the authors, being disrupted is not inevitable. They provide an excellent example of an established company's response to a full-scale attack by new entrants: Cunard, now a part of Carnival Corporation, successfully reinvented itself in a nondisruptive manner as a cruise company catering to vacationers when it became evident that it couldn't compete with air travel.As the title of the book suggests, it is time to move beyond disruption. Disruption and “nondisruptive creation” are two asymmetrical visions of what innovating means. “By setting aside the preconception that disruption is the way, and thinking in terms of nondisruptive creation, you become a sharper observer of nondisruptive opportunities lurking on the horizon (or right in front of you) that would sidestep rather than take on established players, providing new and previously unseen avenues for economic growth.” At the same time, the authors invite us to reimagine innovation with the added dimension of a form of conscious capitalism mindset that prioritizes serving people, i.e. employees, customers, humanity in general and our environment—not solely management teams and shareholders.

This book is very informative on non disruptive innovation and how to achieve it. It is less than previous book Blue Ocean.

I loved Kim & Mauborgne's previous books, so it was natural for me to pick up the new book as soon as it was out. As usual, they enlightened me by uncovering the black-boxed area that business people did not seem to care about. They are good at expanding the horizon of business strategy and innovation by introducing the concept of nondisruptive creation full of examples and practical guides to identify a nondisruptive opportunity.I hope this book gives an alternative and even better way for business leaders and entrepreneurs to create win-win, sustainable growth, especially in the tech industry where disruption is believed to be THE way to pursue the growth of a firm. For example, with the rise of ChatGPT people are talking about which jobs will disappear. But there will be so many potential jobs newly created. What kind of new industries will thrive in the age of AI? We should focus on newly emerging problems that technology can solve, not on the existing problems for a greater benefit for all. This a must-read for those who like to challenge conventional wisdom and take action to make a "win-win" growth.

There is almost nothing non-disruptively or disruptively creative in this book, though the concept is attractive - winning without loss is always likely to be a headline. But the authors in this book misunderstand or misrepresent disruptive innovation in its Christensen (v populist) sense, confusing it instead for a frontline assault on a perhaps bloated (though often powerful) incumbent - when disruptive innovation only disrupts if it has first been non-disruptive enough to build its value proposition. The political view taken in the book is heavy-handed again in far too stark a manner casting division in what is really a complex volatile uncertain and adaptive system, human needs and behaviour at its core, and the naivety in finding solutions to vexed known and unknown problems rather naive and better described by others.

Start here. It has had very little buzz because it inconveniently launched in the middle of AI, Si Valley Bank, layoffs, and other mayhem. But this is the message you need to hear.And their "Blue Ocean Strategy" is the ONE strategy book I recommend. They explain the difference in the intro to this book.--About me: MBA in Strategy & Organization, MS Materials Science, plus decades of experience in finance, marketing, and research.

Eye opening bombshell! This is a game changer. Why didn't anyone think of this before?The concept of positive-sum thinking, instead of zero-sum or non-zero-sum thinking. That's what the world and our societies need. And that's what companies should go for - to innovate and achieve growth without displacing the existing industries, companies or jobs. To do good for themselves and for everybody else. The win of one should not come at the expense of loss for anybody else. Let's go for positive sum and do good for everyone. Not saying that disruption is not good. It is very necessary as well for progress. But companies, governments and economies should also think about going beyond disruption for nondisruptive creation.Bravo! Will be ordering copies for my friends. Very thought provoking!

Gives a good prospective to business approach. Kind of repetitive in the first few chapters but it elaborates better the further you get along