by Adam L Stanley | Feb 6, 2018 | Leadership, Teamwork, Technology, Vendors and Partners
The Big-D hit list: Disrupting the word disruption
Purging overused buzzwords is a big step we can take to open our minds to the realities and challenges of succeeding in business today.
The problem with business jargon, which most of us use ad nauseam, is that it’s not merely annoying, it carries the real potential to block progress. Those nifty little words and phrases may make us sound ingenious within our respective tribes (and own minds), but they can also narrow our thinking to the point where we start cramming our strategies and plans into the same universally-defined small boxes. So, just when we believe we’re thinking “outside of the box,” we’re not!
OK, in the name of creative thinking and staying focused on what matters, like our clients and growing our businesses, the time has come to retire some long-hacked-to-death words. In my first blog, I summarily purged the word “digital.” This time, it’s my pleasure to join a growing mob that can’t wait to see “disruption” in the rear-view mirror. Please, by all means, agree, disagree and/or share your own hit-list words.
“Disruptive innovation,” a term coined by Harvard Business School’s Clayton Christensen in 1997, describes a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves up market, eventually displacing established competitors.
Don’t we love talking about disruption! Very rarely does a day go by when the word doesn’t pop up, and it’s applied to everything, from cool new apps to getting a new dog. There are copious books on the subject that everyone, including me, reference a lot. Christensen and his theories on how disruptive innovation are upending large incumbent companies is a favorite.
Here’s the rub: Disruption makes sense when you’re talking about revolutionary change that takes place over months and years. Christensen defined the difference between sustaining innovation and disruptive innovation. The sustaining side is what established market leaders do by listening to their customers and creating products that satisfy their “predicted” needs in new and exciting ways.
Disruptive innovators create markets that initially appear too small to attract the interest of established firms, which are more focused on delivering steady returns and growth to their shareholders. It isn’t easy for larger firms to justify the risk and investment needed to launch a new concept, which ironically gives smaller firms and start-ups a head start at cornering a market.
Major disruption occurred in the 1990s and early 2000s when new players suddenly burst on the scene with products and services that revolutionized traditional industries. BlackBerry disrupted the mobile telephony market, iPhone disrupted Blackberry and Kodak in digital photography, and so on. The big companies didn’t see it coming.
You could say that Moore’s Law, introduced way back in 1965, gave us the first idea on what disruption would look like. Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel, nailed the speed of change we were about to experience when he observed that it would take a year (later revised to 18 months) for costs to be cut in half and productivity to double, and that this rate of growth would continue for decades. Welcome to the early days of the information age! Today, such changes can double in months instead of years. And, as I discussed in a prior blog, just wait until quantum computing hits the scene. It will be like comparing texting to snail mail. Point being, we’ve been in this “disruptive” bubble since the ‘60s!
So, let’s get over “disruption.” Let’s see it as a constant and rise to the challenge of operating in a world where change will only escalate. It’s business-as-usual in the high-tech fast lane and we need a firm grip. Our jobs as business leaders is to know our customers across the spectrum better than ever before; scan emerging markets; watch for new competition; react, not over-react; proactively search for new opportunities; and invest wisely in systems and strategies that are agile enough to withstand the change bombardment. For that, it always comes down to having the best and brightest people on your team.
Disruption is the second word on by Big D Hit List, following Digital. For my next blog, I’ll dig into another longer word that’s been choking conversation particularly in the business world for too long: Disintermediation.
Be well. Lead on.
Adam
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by Adam L Stanley | Oct 24, 2016 | Leadership, Technology
Technology leaders must think like Disruptors
A decade ago, the five most valuable companies on the S&P 500 were Exxon, GE, Microsoft, Gazprom, and Citigroup. Now? It’s Apple, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook. Things change. And they change fast. And many technology leaders are not ready for it. In some ways, none of us are.
Amazon is maybe the ultimate disruptive company; it essentially ushered along a completely new way of thinking about commerce. But interestingly, before Amazon started there was another disrupter called Webvan. In 1999, myself and a group of fellow Wharton MBA students in an e-commerce course won a prize in a contest sponsored by Salomon Smith Barney. (There are so many elements of irony in this but I will save that for another blog.) Our topic? Webvan vs Albertsons: How e-commerce will disrupt brick and mortar grocers. Our conclusion was that the bricks would always be around to some extent but that everyone would become more comfortable with buying groceries online thanks to Webvan. We were right about some of that! More important at the time is that the now defunct brand sponsored our $1000 per team member prize!
Perhaps the ultimate success of Amazon is the fact they learned from the mistakes of their Webvan predecessor. Webvan is the best example of a company that tried and failed at a bold attempt to disrupt a stodgy industry. It raised $375 million in its IPO, achieved a peak stock market value of $1.2 billion, then flamed out spectacularly before filing for bankruptcy in July 2001.
Facebook completely disrupted how we think about relationships and staying connected to friends and family. But before them there was MySpace. Google and Apple, in their own ways, did the same for accessing and sharing information. But they borrowed heavily from the playbooks, both winning and losing games, of Alta Vista, BlackBerry, and Apple 1.0 (remember Jobs was fired by Apple?)
In my career, I’ve met plenty of leaders and managers — up through the executive level — who absolutely think disruption isn’t real, or won’t come for them. And I have met several techies and startup guys who are on their 10th attempt and think everything is ripe for disruption. They are both wrong to some extent. There are some industries that are just begging to be disrupted: real estate title companies and public education come to mind (sorry if the latter offends).There are certain industries that would be a little bit harder to disrupt. Airlines come to mind, because the cost of entry is massive. But … you could argue Southwest disrupted the airline industry to some extent. Their stock is still mostly hot, too.
The reality is that anything CAN be disrupted. Mind blowing statistic for amateur corporate historians: 88% of the 1955 Fortune 500 doesn’t exist anymore. You can argue that 1955 was a long time ago and business models are obviously very different, and you’d be right — but you’d also be proving my point. To quote Varsity Blues, a B-movie that came out right around the time Webvan was imploding: “Things change, Mox.” We’re all candidates for disruption to some extent.
That is going to require a new way for technology leaders, CIOs, CTOs, and others with decision-making oversight to approach their day-to-day jobs. What might that look like? Here are six ways I see it shifting.
Scenario planning: We will constantly prepare for disruption or downturns by thinking through our potential reaction to certain market events. We’ve ideally been doing this for years, but too many CIOs are still spending part of their supposedly strategic time just putting out fires.
New business models. We must continue building a closer relationship with the business units. We can’t be seen as “IT” or “infrastructure.” It needs to be baked in. My current team is talking to as many external clients as we can, along with our colleagues, so that we better understand demand. We must continue to think about new ways of working and new business models for delivering services.
Experimentation. We must be comfortable with taking risks and failing fast. We must try out new things and not be afraid of the possibility of experimenting and throwing away. The best unicorns started off as 10, 20, 30, or 150 failed ideas. If you want a good read on making (tons of) money despite massive failure at some points in the past, check this out from HBR.
New org model. We must cease the “us” versus “them” thinking that has corporate IT and the business operating as separate entities. We are partners driving value. It’s that simple. I disdain the use of the word “The Business” as “Clients” of IT. We are all colleagues working together to drive value for external customers and profitable growth for the company.
Invest in talent. We must begin to compete for the software engineers, user experience designers, and innovators that are currently going to the startups and the more Innovative companies. In order for us to change we must invest in new talent as well as training our existing talent to think differently. This is hard for many technology executives who came up in a world where products and processes were paramount to people.
What else would you add about how technology leaders in enterprise can think differently about potential disruptive forces?
Be well. Lead On.
Adam
Related Posts:
Disruption: Thinking like our ancestors
Riding a Wave of Change
Innovations Changing Our Industry
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by Adam L Stanley | Sep 30, 2014 | Technology
Thousands of years ago, traders of meat, skins, and grains met each other in open and transparent marketplaces. Quality was key to repeat business, and pricing driven by supply and demand. Winners in the market listened to the needs of the people they met and found new sources of raw materials and methods of production that better met these needs.
Today, I have joined Oracle for Open World 2014 in San Francisco. DTZ is here to co-present with Oracle some of the work we have done with Google Glass integrated with JD Edwards, our global property service. Sitting in this room amongst hundreds of technology leaders, I find myself struck by how quickly things changed and yet how much remains exactly the same as it was in ancient times of the cavemen.
Sure we talk about Internet of things, big data, digital transformation, the cloud, and other buzzwords. But the most fascinating disruption factor to me is the most basic element of commerce. And it is an element that has been important since the very first days when hunters traded their fresh game for vegetables and grains. Quite simply, it is the customer.
Every exciting trend, every new innovation, the growth of crowd funding, crowd sourcing, crowd planning, crowd protesting… All of it relates to a renewed focus on the consumer. Whether the consumer is an individual or a group of individuals, companies succeed based on their ability to meet the constantly evolving needs of the consumer. And they fail when they forget that the consumer is everywhere.
The consumer is your customers, more globally and digitally connected than ever. And unlike the traders of the early days, they can find your competitors within seconds versus months or years. And they want access to your products and services wherever they are and however is most convenient to them at any particular time.
The consumer is your employees, who are diverse in their backgrounds and their preferences for how to work. They want to have an experience at work that is better than or at least compatible to their experience outside of work. And they want to be able to move on when not challenged.
The consumer is your investors, who instead of putting all of their money in banks now have access to dozens of new currencies like Bitcoin. They need to be convinced that giving you their money is better than micro lending, kickstarting, crowdfunding or doing their own thing.
At the end of the day, perhaps disruption is a lot more simple than we make it seem at these mega conferences like OpenWorld. Perhaps disruption is simply a relentless focus on consumers: your clients, employees and investors. Dream every night of how you can better meet their needs and there is no way you can NOT disrupt your industry. Perhaps the only way you will get left behind is if you leave your consumers behind. Perhaps disruption is simply about a return to the past.
Be Well. Lead On.
Adam
Adam Stanley
Adam L. StanleyConnections Blog
Technology. Leadership. Food. Life.
AdamLStanley.com
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Perhaps the ultimate success of Amazon is the fact they 
In my career, I’ve met plenty of leaders and managers — up through the executive level — who absolutely think disruption isn’t real, or won’t come for them. And I have met several techies and startup guys who are on their 10th attempt and think everything is ripe for disruption. They are both wrong to some extent. There are some industries that are just begging to be disrupted: real estate title companies and public education come to mind (sorry if the latter offends).There are certain industries that would be a little bit harder to disrupt. Airlines come to mind, because the cost of entry is massive. But … you could argue Southwest disrupted the airline industry to some extent. 
Experimentation. We must be comfortable with taking risks and failing fast. We must try out new things and not be afraid of the possibility of experimenting and throwing away. The best unicorns started off as 10, 20, 30, or 150 failed ideas. If you want a good read on making (tons of) money despite massive failure at some points in the past, 
Invest in talent. We must begin to compete for the software engineers, user experience designers, and innovators that are currently going to the startups and the more Innovative companies. In order for us to change we must invest in new talent as well as training our existing talent to think differently. This is hard for many technology executives who came up in a world where products and processes were paramount to people.
