SO YOU WANT TO BE A DISRUPTIVE INNOVATOR?

Be careful what you ask for. You might actually get it!

In today's buzzword-laden business world, we're enamored with the language du jour. Words and catchphrases like lean in, enable, platform, and, of course, disruption are all the rage. Given this book is about how to create a culture of innovation, I felt it necessary to dispel a few assumptions about disruptive innovation specifically, right out of the gate. These assumptions can impede our understanding of innovation itself — and how to shape culture around it — unless we put them into a broader context.

Why are so many of us looking for disruptive innovation? It's simple. Because we want the type of breakthroughs that transform industries, create new business models, and drive growth. Nothing wrong with that! But do we really want everyone in our organizations to be disruptive? No way.

Here's the issue: Although disruptive innovation is important, it isn't the only type of innovation that's necessary to survive, thrive, and win in today's rapidly changing world. Other types of innovation are equally essential. And you need everyone doing them.

The problem is that most companies either go for only the big bets or get stuck in a single-minded focus on the small stuff. If we only swing for the fences, we'll miss the opportunity to score on singles, doubles, or triples as well. And if we only go for the singles, we'll never win the Home Run Derby. The challenge is that we need a balanced approach, one that's focused on all types of innovation.

Disruptive Innovation's Dirty Secret

I believe it's important to understand the context of buzzwords, so we can fully appreciate both their value and their limitations. Let's start with a little story that goes back to the very source of disruptive innovation itself to understand today's state of innovation — and how we can rise above the buzz to create a true culture of innovation.

In 1998, when I was running the strategy group at Hewlett-Packard (HP), we invited Clayton Christensen, the iconic Harvard professor who wrote The Innovator's Dilemma and coined the term disruptive innovation, to come speak to us.

We asked him a simple question, "How do you do disruptive innovation?"

Christensen shared compelling examples. He argued that companies, and entire industries, can be "disrupted" by unforeseen competitors — new entrants that offer up products or technologies at a fraction of the cost yet with equal or greater benefits compared to current options. The result? Customers abandon the old way and move to the new. Industry-leading companies die. New leaders arise. Wealth is destroyed and created all in the same breath. Disruption occurs.

Although I left HP a few years after that, Christensen's words stuck with me. Fast- forward to today — disruptive innovation is business's biggest paradigm. Just about everyone wants it or thinks they need it.

Disruptive innovation is an easily graspable concept, mostly because we've seen the recent casualties of disruption: Kodak, Blockbuster, Borders, Black-Berry. And most of us want to avoid a similar fate or, better yet, reap the benefits associated with being the disruptor, as Netflix, Amazon, and Apple have. Disruptive innovation — or avoiding its consequences — is now a widely embraced business imperative.

What most people don't realize is that there's a dirty little secret behind the concept, and that today's disruption frenzy has started to undermine the balanced approach that's needed to create a culture of innovation.

Old Idea, New Language

Few people know that the fundamental concept of disruptive innovation wasn't new when Christensen introduced it. In 1942 economist Joseph Schumpeter described the dynamics of "creative destruction," essentially the same thing as disruptive innovation.

Jump forward to 1994. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's James Utterback published a groundbreaking book, Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation, which described how the ice-harvesting industry was displaced by "ice boxes" (a.k.a. refrigerators), how manual typewriters were stamped out by IBM's Selectric electric typewriter, and how something called electronic-imaging technology could pose a big threat to film-based photography in general and to Kodak in particular (it did).

All this was years before The Innovator's Dilemma made it onto the scene. What this previous research didn't have, however, was a catchy term like disruptive to tag onto the word innovation. The rest is history. Disruption is our lens.

Most people familiar with the research on innovation also know about paradigms. Paradigms are mental models that contain unquestioned assumptions about how things work. The world is flat. The sun revolves around the earth. These assumptions are accepted as truths, until they're turned upside down and replaced with an alternative paradigm. Paradigms have always existed, and they always will. Just as quality and reengineering were the business world's lenses in the 1980s and 1990s, disruptive innovation is one of today's biggest paradigms.

While I'm in full agreement that disruptive innovation is a natural part of the evolution of organizations and industries, the "movement" has created a big problem for business. Here's the issue: If we're overly concerned with disrupting or being disrupted, we neglect other types of innovation, innovation that can actually lead to disruption! That's why we need everyone innovating — but doing it in a way that makes sense for their job function, which may mean simply focusing on process improvements, tweaks to current products, enhancing the customer experience, or anything else that may support today's business.

If Steve Jobs Didn't Try to Do It, Why Should You?

The reality is that most "disruptions" don't start out that way. Steve Jobs, arguably one of the greatest disruptive innovators of all time, said the same thing. "When we created the iTunes Music Store, we did that because we thought it would be great to be able to buy music electronically, not because we had plans to redefine the music industry."

Looking back, it's probably not too strong of a statement to say that Apple disrupted the music industry. But did Jobs know that's what he was doing at the time? No. Was it part of Apple's strategy? No. Apple created iTunes because it felt like the right thing to do to add value to customers and the world. Simple as that.

Take two other modern-day disruptors. Larry Page and Sergey Brin didn't start Google (now renamed Alphabet) with the intention of transforming the Internet, buying YouTube, or launching Android. Their very...