FOR THE PAST 20 YEARS, the battle cry of business has been, ‘Disrupt or die.’ Calls for disruption have rung out across Silicon Valley, major corporate boardrooms, the media and business conferences around the globe. Corporate leaders have continually been warned that the only way to survive, succeed and grow is to disrupt their industries — or even their own companies.
Not surprisingly, many have come to see disruption as a near-synonym for innovation. But is disruption the only way to innovate and grow? And is it necessarily the best way? Our research suggests the answer is No, and that the overriding focus on disruption has led us to largely overlook another avenue of innovation and growth — one that we would argue is at least as important.
This avenue involves the creation of new markets without disruption or displacement — what we’ve come to think of as non-disruptive creation. Non-disruptive creation creates new industries without leaving failed companies, lost jobs and destroyed markets in its wake. It offers the immense potential to innovate new markets where none existed before.
If we could better understand this other form of market-creating innovation and how it works, we would be better equipped to achieve it. And so, our research questions began: Is non-disruptive creation about scientific or technological innovation or new-to-the world products? Or is it something different? If different, is it applicable to all regions of the globe or only to certain geographic areas, such as bottom-of-the-pyramid markets where a lack of economic development may mean there are few industries to be disrupted?
Our answer to these questions was that non-disruptive creation can’t be defined as inventive or new technology or new-to-the-world innovation or confined
