Strategy is one of the five fundamental domains in the Learning Business Maturity Model. And most learning business leaders know that strategy is important. But truly understanding strategy and formulating intelligent strategy? That’s trickier.
To help with that understanding and formulation, in this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, number 404, co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele offer an audio book report on Beyond Disruption: Innovate and Achieve Growth Without Displacing Industries, Companies, or Jobs by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne of blue ocean fame.
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Celisa Steele: [00:00:00] Nondisruptive creation is a mode of innovation and growth well aligned to the mission-driven focus of learning businesses that aim to have a positive impact on the field, profession, or industry they serve.
Celisa Steele: [00:00:17] I’m Celisa Steele.
Jeff Cobb: [00:00:18] I’m Jeff Cobb, and this is the Leading Learning Podcast. Strategy is one of the five fundamental domains we’ve identified where mature and successful learning businesses need to invest time and intention. And most learning business leaders know that strategy is important. But truly understanding strategy and formulating intelligent strategy? Well, that’s a bit trickier.
Celisa Steele: [00:00:46] That trickiness or slipperiness of strategy is why we’ve been big fans of the work of W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne for a long time. They are talented at dissecting the strategy of successful organizations, explaining that strategy at the conceptual level, and then developing tools and frameworks to help others develop successful strategy.
Jeff Cobb: [00:01:10] In this episode, number 404, we want to offer a kind of audio book report on their latest book Beyond Disruption: Innovate and Achieve Growth Without Displacing Industries, Companies, or Jobs. And this was published in 2023.
Celisa Steele: [00:01:28] In fact, we’re only going to cover the first half or part one of the book in this episode. So we hope you will tune back in to episode 406 for part two. So part one of Beyond Disruption focuses on “Nondisruptive Creation: What It Is and Why It Matters.” Part two is “How to Realize Nondisruptive Creation.” So, again, today is going to be on that part one. It’s going to be more foundational, more conceptual. Episode 406 will be more of the how-to, more of the practical.
Jeff Cobb: [00:02:04] We talked about summer reading a while ago. You can go back to episode 362 for that. And I know that Beyond Disruption was on Celisa’s nonfiction pick list, but I don’t think you got to it over the summer, did you?
Celisa Steele: [00:02:21] I did not. I did read them all. Every one that I said I was going to read in that episode, I did read them, but I did not get to this one—Beyond Disruption—during the summer. I got to it very recently, but it felt like a book that would be worth providing this kind of report on. And part of that’s just because, as we said at the outset, we are long-time fans of blue ocean and the work of Kim and Mauborgne.
Blue Ocean Strategy
Jeff Cobb: [00:02:46] We are indeed. Their two previous books. Blue Ocean Strategy, which came out in 2004, was a mega bestseller. I think it’s got to be one of the bestselling business books of all time.
Celisa Steele: [00:02:57] Well, actually, the cover of Beyond Disruption says about Blue Ocean Strategy, “one of the bestselling business books of the century.”
Jeff Cobb: [00:03:03] There you go.
Celisa Steele: [00:03:04] And it must be true if it’s on the book cover.
Jeff Cobb: [00:03:06] That’s right. And then Blue Ocean Shift, which is a follow-up that came out in 2017 to expand on some of those blue ocean ideas. As you were referencing, we’ve found Blue Ocean Strategy both conceptually and practically very, very useful. Some of the tools that come from it we’ve used repeatedly over the years in our consulting work, things like the strategy canvas, for those who may be familiar with it. And just to give a little bit on what blue ocean strategy is, the core concept is you want to go with your business, with your product offerings, to where there is less competition or even no competition. The idea is that most organizations really focus on trying to outperform their competitors, or their rivals, within an existing industry, jockeying for that competitive advantage. There’s zero-sum thinking there—if I win, you lose—and it keeps you in a bloody red ocean, as the metaphor there.
Celisa Steele: [00:04:13] Right. Meaning there’s a lot of competition. There are the sharks eating the fish there.
Jeff Cobb: [00:04:17] Gruesome.
Celisa Steele: [00:04:19] Yes, that’s where the red in the ocean comes from. And so the idea is you want to be out of where there’s so much competition; you want to try to find a blue ocean where there is very little to no competition, and it’s much more smooth sailing.
Jeff Cobb: [00:04:33] Smooth sailing. You can kick back on your yacht, relax, and listen to some of those yacht rock tunes while you’re out there on the blue ocean. This is something that we do have some substantive existing resources on, because we do use it frequently. We are big fans of blue ocean. There is a blog post on Blue Ocean Strategy, which really goes through the six paths for getting to a blue ocean. And, again, Kim and Mauborgne are very methodical about how you can do this. This looks at some of the key ways they talk about assessing the industry you’re in and essentially looking at other industries, looking at that industry in a different way and reconfiguring, emphasizing some things you might do more, de-emphasizing or even eliminating some things, and then introducing some new things into the mix. That’s how you get to that blue ocean, or at least get yourself closer to it. So we’ve got that blog post, and then we also do have a podcast episode around that.
Blue Ocean Strategy Versus Nondisruptive Creation
Celisa Steele: [00:05:29] Be sure to check out the show notes for this episode, and we’ll link to some of those existing resources that we already have on blue ocean. Now, in the preface to their most recent book, Beyond Disruption, Kim and Mauborgne write about the fact that they got a lot of requests from people for them to say more, to explain more about innovation. A lot of the literature and a lot of the thinking about innovation is still stuck in that zero-sum win-or-lose approach, and so tied to that is the fact that often innovation and disruption get talked about in the same breath at the same time. It’s almost like they go hand in hand. And so Kim and Mauborgne are really trying to tease apart the disruption in the innovation part, and it’s very much in line with their blue ocean strategy. Blue ocean strategy really is non-zero-sum thinking. So, if you have the more traditional “We’re going to outperform our rivals,” that’s that zero-sum thinking. The blue ocean tries to get you beyond that. It’s that non-zero-sum thinking. And then what they really talk about in this new book is nondisruptive creation, and that is actually positive-sum thinking. It’s this idea of innovation without destroying or disrupting anything that already exists.
Jeff Cobb: [00:06:55] Yes, and I see this as trying to move beyond, or at least add to, that traditional conversation around innovation, around creativity. You have Joseph Schumpeter, the economist, on creative destruction—that’s the process that new things come out of. And Clayton Christensen, when he talks about the innovator’s dilemma, it’s really about companies dealing with how do they deal with the disruptive innovation that’s happening out there? And, if they don’t deal with that disruptive innovation, then they’re not going to survive, basically, and there’s a dilemma there in how to deal with that. I don’t think Beyond Disruption necessarily replaces any of that thinking, but it takes it into new territory.
Three Distinctive Characteristics of Nondisruptive Creation
Celisa Steele: [00:07:32] Right. And they mention both Schumpeter and Clayton Christensen in the book. So, yes, they’re definitely trying to expand the literature and the thinking that’s out there around innovation. They posit that there are three distinctive characteristics of nondisruptive creation. And so the first distinctive characteristic is that it can come about because of a scientific or technology-driven innovation, or not. So it doesn’t have to be tied to a new technology, although it can be. I’ll just give a couple quick examples here. One, in a nondisruptive creative product that came about through a scientific discovery, through technology, is the Post-it Note.
Celisa Steele: [00:08:17] There’s this idea, you might have heard before, that it was a failure. It wasn’t doing what it was supposed to do. It was this adhesive that didn’t work. But then they came to realize that—oh, a light adhesive where you can post a note and then remove it easily without damaging what it’s on—that actually has a use. So it didn’t displace any existing product; it was a technology that led to this nondisruptive creation. And then an example of a nondisruptive creation that didn’t come about because of any new technology is Sesame Street. Sesame Street really introduced this new idea of educational TV for kids, but the TV already existed, the technology behind it all existed. It was really more about the application of that technology.
Jeff Cobb: [00:09:07] It’s hard to imagine a world without Post-it Notes or Sesame Street, both just such an integral part of life now. In addition to it not having to come out of that scientific or a technology-driven innovation, it’s also not limited to any specific region or socioeconomic standing. So it can happen in developed markets—that’s certainly what happened with Post-it Notes—or in developing markets. Kim and Mauborgne talk about the bottom-of-the-pyramid concept with this—that C.K. Prahalad, another great strategic thinker, did so much with a while back—and they specifically referenced Grameen Bank in Bangladesh.
Celisa Steele: [00:09:47] Right. And just really briefly, Grameen Bank is a microfinance option that really opened up lending to people at the very low end of the socioeconomic ladder who really had no access to capital before, and it allowed them to be able to borrow money. So that’s the second of those three distinctive characteristics. The third is that nondisruptive creation is not synonymous with new-to-the-world innovation. It can be new to the world, or it can be new to an area. New-to-the-world innovation—that can actually just as easily be disruptive as nondisruptive. You have to think about how that new-to-the-world innovation is being applied. So, if you think about new to the world, you think about something like CDs replacing cassette tapes. Well, that’s a place where you have displacement in the music industry because of it.
Celisa Steele: [00:10:42] But you can have new-to-the-world innovation that does not displace anything. Again, I’ll cite Sesame Street there, where it really just added this new category of edutainment for the very young. It can also be new to an area, and one of the examples that they give in Beyond Disruption is a machine that got sold in India to allow women in rural areas to make sanitary pads. So it’s not an innovation; it’s not a brand-new product. Sanitary pads existed throughout the world, but not in these rural areas in India. So that’s an example of a new-to-an-area versus a new-to-the-world innovation. Those are the three distinctive characteristics of nondisruptive creation. First, it can come about because of a scientific or technology-driven innovation, or not. Second, it’s not limited to any specific region or socioeconomic standing. And then, third, it’s not synonymous with new-to-the-world innovation. It can be new to the world, or it can be new to an area.
Partner with Tagoras
Jeff Cobb: [00:11:52] At Tagoras, we partner with professional and trade associations, continuing education units, training firms, and other learning businesses to help them to understand market realities and potential, to connect better with existing customers and find new ones, and to make smart investment decisions around product development and portfolio management. Drawing on our expertise in lifelong learning, market assessment, and strategy formulation, we can help you achieve greater reach, revenue, and impact. Learn more at tagoras.com/more.
Innovation and Nondisruptive Creation
Jeff Cobb: [00:12:29] Kim and Mauborgne posit that nondisruptive creation is a “distinctive innovation concept for growth,” and they define it as “the creation of a brand-new market outside or beyond existing boundaries.”
Celisa Steele: [00:12:45] They go to a pretty good length to say that this is not a new phenomenon at all. It’s a new term. It’s a new couching. But the phenomenon has been around for a very long time, as you may have already begun to gather from these examples that we’ve listed. Sesame Street first aired in 1969, and the Grameen Bank was started in 1976; it’s been around long enough to earn a Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. That was a prize that the bank itself shared with its founder, Muhammad Yunus. Post-it notes—they go back to 1980. So these are examples that show that nondisruptive creation is not a new phenomenon at all.
Jeff Cobb: [00:13:28] Again, they’re really contrasting it with disruptive creation—that’s the kind of creation that really displaces and disrupts some or all of an existing industry. You just mentioned CDs and the cassette industry. You can think of any number of ones, like Netflix coming along and toppling Blockbuster in the videotape industry.
Celisa Steele: [00:13:48] Then they also say that nondisruptive creation, it’s different from disruptive creation, as you just said, Jeff. And it’s also different from blue ocean strategy. And so I’m going to quote them here because this is a little short passage where they really just tried to distinguish between these three different kinds of creation. “While disruptive creation generates new markets within existing industry boundaries, resulting in a high level of disruptive growth, blue ocean strategy creates new markets across existing industry boundaries, producing a mix of disruptive and nondisruptive growth. In comparison, nondisruptive creation stands apart, because it creates new markets outside existing industry boundaries and generates mostly nondisruptive growth.”
Jeff Cobb: [00:14:39] I’ve been trying to get my head around this, and it may take me a while to fully get there. But, when I think of blue ocean strategy across this spectrum that you’ve just described—where you’ve got completely disruptive stuff, you’ve got blue ocean stuff, and then you’ve got the nondisruptive stuff—I think of something like Southwest Airlines coming along, which didn’t totally disrupt everything; it was somewhat disruptive, but really, it was a situation where they looked at the airline industry as it currently existed. And then, as you noted, and as we’ve mentioned, they looked across into other areas.
Jeff Cobb: [00:15:12] Specifically, Southwest looked at other industries; they looked at the car rental industry and said, “What can we learn there? How would we make taking a flight—something that you might opt for instead of renting a car—seem as good or better a deal than getting that car?” And that’s what really fueled their thinking to carve out that blue ocean within an existing industry. It wasn’t something completely new and different. It didn’t completely disrupt that industry in the way that, say, CDs did to the tape industry or that Netflix did for Blockbuster. But it did shake it up some while creating that blue ocean, but it wasn’t all the way in that nondisruptive realm either because it clearly did disrupt some.
Within Versus Across Versus Outside Existing Boundaries
Celisa Steele: [00:15:51] Right. I think that example ties to that passage that I quoted. There are really three key words in it: within, across, and outside. It’s these prepositions that are really driving this distinction, and that when you have disruptive creation, it’s happening within these existing boundaries. So it’s like listening to music. It happened on a cassette tape; now it’s happening on CDs, it’s happening on MP3s, and it’s happening on your iPhone. These are cases where it’s very disruptive. One is really supplanting the next one. Then you have blue ocean, which is happening across existing industry boundaries, and what you just shared around Southwest.
Celisa Steele: [00:16:30] They weren’t just looking at other airlines; they were also looking at the car rental industry and took what they could learn from that. So they were looking across industries, and that gave them that insight to decide what their strategy would be. And then nondisruptive creation is about creating new markets outside existing industry boundaries. And so, if you keep those three prepositions in mind, then that hopefully helps with this distinction of these different types. And so that nondisruptive creation is really meant to be a positive-sum perspective because, if you take the disruptive creation, that really does tend to shake up an existing industry massively. With nondisruptive creation, you don’t have that, so you lose some of the social pain that can go along with it.
Celisa Steele: [00:17:22] Nondisruptive creation doesn’t bring the social costs—things like lost jobs that often happen if existing players go out of business. So when Blockbuster goes out of business, that means a lot of people are losing those jobs, and there isn’t necessarily an obvious place for them to go—that’s what happens with disruptive creation. With nondisruptive creation, because it’s not happening within an existing market, you largely are finding new jobs and new opportunities, and it’s not actually eliminating any as part of that process for creating new. An example of that could be Kickstarter, which I am hoping that many folks are familiar with.
Celisa Steele: [00:18:04] But this came along with this idea of a way to help especially creative projects find the financial backing they needed to actually be launched out into the world. So there wasn’t really anybody else who was providing that kind of level of crowdfunding/crowdsourcing for those creators. Kickstarter provided that. So that’s an example of nondisruptive creation that Kim and Mauborgne cite. We know people who have used Kickstarter. We know Will Thalheimer is using it for his latest book to try to get it out into the world. That’s currently running while we’re recording. It’ll be wrapped up by the time this airs. But that’s an example, from our world, of someone using Kickstarter.
Jeff Cobb: [00:18:48] Yes, and before that, you either had to have a book publisher or you had to self-finance. So this really did create a completely new space. And then musicians are using that. Businesses are using that to get going. You don’t have to necessarily go out for venture capital, get a bank loan, or deplete your savings anymore if you can do something like a Kickstarter.
Four Sources of Business Advantage for Nondisruptive Creation
Celisa Steele: [00:19:14] Kim and Mauborgne talk about there being four sources of business advantage for nondisruptive creation, and we’ll talk about those four sources. I will say up front that all four don’t necessarily apply all of the time, and Kim and Mauborgne found that in their examples as they were looking through what they had to mine as they were trying to develop this theory. But very often, all four do apply. The four sources of business advantage have to do…if you think about the entity behind the nondisruptive creation, if you think about them as an entrant into a space, if you think about them as an incumbent, and then if you think about the internal stakeholders, and then if you think about the external stakeholders. So those are the four perspectives that drive these four sources of business advantage. And so we can maybe just talk about each as we go along.
Jeff Cobb: [00:20:05] Yes. If you talk about as an entrant, you’re going to be able to avoid direct confrontations with established incumbents because you really aren’t confronting them. If you think about Kickstarter that we just talked about, it wasn’t like the publishing houses or the record companies or the banks were saying, “Oh, no, Kickstarter, don’t do this. We want those people.” No, it was serving this audience that wasn’t being served by doing what it was doing. And, if you do try to come in and disrupt what’s already going on—they gave the example of MoviePass trying to disrupt conventional movie-theater sales, but they just really couldn’t win against the established players like AMC. So they were going for that confrontation. They had to if they’re going to disrupt that industry. And it was a losing battle.
Celisa Steele: [00:20:50] Right. Because those incumbents have a lot of vested interest in not allowing disruptive creation to happen. So, if you can come in in a nondisruptive way, then you’re likely to not have any pushback or any competition from incumbents that you really have to deal with. Now, if you happen to already be established—in that case, you’re an incumbent instead of an entrant—then nondisruptive creation can actually be an effective way to respond to disruption in your industry. Kim and Mauborgne give the example of Cunard, the big transatlantic ship line. They’ve existed for, I don’t know, hundreds of years maybe, but during World War II, they did a lot of transatlantic voyages to move people.
Celisa Steele: [00:21:39] Well, they got disrupted by Pan Am when we suddenly, then, had transatlantic flights. And so Cunard, at first, tried to compete head-on. They bought a big equity stake in an Airways, and then they ran into trouble because the state-owned British Overseas Airways Corporation appealed to the minister, and they got Cunard’s air license revoked. But then what Cunard did was they rethought, and they thought, what if, instead of us providing a way to get people from one side of the Atlantic to the other, what if it’s not about that? It’s about the journey. It’s about the experience of getting there. And so they really rethought what it would be like to be on that ship and how that could be different than being on a plane. By doing that, they really helped create cruise tourism. They’re now part of Carnival Corporation.
Jeff Cobb: [00:22:30] And so, those first two, being an entrant or being an incumbent, are about market dynamics and how you’re going to interact with an existing market and/or create a different market that doesn’t require any disruption. But then you also have this issue of just your stakeholders, in whatever it is that you’re trying to do, and if you are being nondisruptive, then you’re going to have this advantage that your internal stakeholders—might be your employees, might be your current customers—are going to be supportive because they have nothing to lose.
Celisa Steele: [00:23:00] That’s right. An example of a disruptive creation where an organization ran into that internal stakeholder issue and those internal stakeholders not being supportive is Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica had this huge sales force; they were really good at selling those hardback versions of the encyclopedias that people would have in their houses. Well, then, as things moved towards computers, into being online, Encyclopedia Britannica knew that was happening. They developed a CD-ROM at first, and they were moving online, but their sales people were pushing back because that CD didn’t cost as much as the hardbacks. And so, even as the organization was trying to evolve, the internal stakeholders weren’t supportive because it was disrupting, that CD was displacing those hardcover encyclopedias.
Jeff Cobb: [00:23:53] And you never do see a door-to-door encyclopedia salesperson anymore. Those days are simply gone. So that’s an example of internal stakeholders being supportive, or at least having nothing to lose with the type of change we’re talking about. And then there’s also external stakeholders. And with disruptive creation, those external stakeholders usually don’t care because, again, it’s not impacting them, and there’s not going to be any backlash that you might deal with if you’re trying to put forth some really disruptive type of creation.
Celisa Steele: [00:24:23] Right. If it’s nondisruptive creation, usually external stakeholders just don’t care. You’re not going to have to deal with backlash. One example Kim and Mauborgne give of a disruptive creation that did result in backlashes—TADA, which is a ride-hailing service in Korea. It made use of this loophole in the law that allowed non-licensed taxi drivers to drive large vehicles. I think it was over 11 passengers. And so they introduced this ride-hailing service that used these big vans—12-15 passenger vans—so they didn’t have to employ taxi drivers to operate them. Well, then, the taxi drivers were concerned because it started taking away their business. Very unfortunately, it led to such a decline. For some of those taxi drivers, there were examples of suicide, then there were protests and folks trying to get the government involved. And so, then, ultimately, the Korean National Assembly amended that law and got rid of that loophole that it allowed TADA to exist in the first place. So, again, if you’re going to create disruption, the incumbents may be pulling in also external stakeholders to help them push back and try to keep you out of their space.
Jeff Cobb: [00:25:45] Yes, it makes me think of what’s going on with Uber all over the place. But, particularly in London, with the London cabbies—a similar sort of situation of external stakeholders. A definite backlash to that disruption in that market.
The Rising Importance of Nondisruptive Creation
Celisa Steele: [00:26:07] Kim and Mauborgne argue that nondisruptive creation is going to become more and more important, and they really have two main reasons for saying that. One is that they argue that nondisruptive creation is a way to tie social good to shareholder benefit. So rather than those being separate, rather than social good being relegated to a corporate giving program or something like that, you actually tie the two together. They argue that “…with nondisruptive creation, social good is not achieved in how companies spend money, but it begins to be achieved in the very way that they make money.” And so part of that is this idea that, with nondisruptive creation, you’re not eliminating jobs; you’re not eliminating companies; you’re creating things that would provide jobs, that would provide something, a product of value, and so you’re doing good through what you actually offer with your nondisruptive creation. That’s one reason. The second main reason they say that is nondisruptive creation ties to where we are in terms of the industrial revolution.
Jeff Cobb: [00:27:19] Yes. And so they cite the fourth industrial revolution, where they see us now, and just a brief history of revolutions here. The first industrial revolution began in the late 18th century. That was steam power coming along, mechanization—all of those things that made possible the factories, that people moved from farm to factory to cities—everything that happened in society then. The second came in with mass production, electricity, assembly lines. And then, in the third, which is in the 20th century, we obviously saw computers, automation, the whole rise of IT. But now, many people characterize us as being in a fourth industrial revolution, in which we have exponential technologies like AI, blockchain, and virtual reality.
Celisa Steele: [00:28:09] As we know, artificial intelligence has replaced some jobs. It’s made those jobs no longer needed to be done by humans, and it’s going to replace more jobs. It’s also changed jobs, and it will change more jobs as humans learn how to work with artificial intelligence. Now, nondisruptive creation can help because it can provide jobs and work for what Kim and Mauborgne call the “released human capital.” So, as AI is replacing people and changing what jobs are needed, nondisruptive creation will actually be creating new jobs that can then hopefully help those folks who’ve been displaced find work and something to do. I would say then there’s another third reason that we think nondisruptive creation might continue to grow, at least in our little small space of learning businesses, and that’s because it really does feel like a natural alignment of nondisruptive creation with the mission-driven focus and purpose of most learning businesses. So, if you think about really wanting to improve the profession or industry that your learning business serves, that’s very much in keeping with nondisruptive creation, where you’re trying to add to the pie, not take something away from others. I think there’s something that’s very well aligned.
Three Paths to Innovation
Jeff Cobb: [00:29:35] And so, a final takeaway from the first half of the book before we wrap up today, and, again, we will be back with talking about the second half of the book. But, for this first half, we’ll quote directly from the book where Kim and Mauborgne say, “…what triggers one type of market-creating innovation over another largely comes down to the type of problem or opportunity you set out to address.”
Celisa Steele: [00:30:01] So they talk about three paths to innovating new markets, and those three paths are to offer a breakthrough solution to an industry’s existing problem—that’s the first one. The second one is to redefine an industry’s existing problem and then solve that. And then the third is to identify and solve a brand-new problem or seize a brand-new opportunity beyond existing boundaries. Now, which of those three that you are engaged in and pursuing determines the kind of growth? So, if you’re offering a breakthrough solution to an industry’s existing problem, that’s going to put you into that realm of disruptive creation and growth.
Jeff Cobb: [00:30:47] And, if you’re redefining an industry’s existing problem, trying to solve for that, then blue ocean strategy leading to that blend of disruptive and nondisruptive growth—so some displacement but less, that middle path. That’s going to be the type of growth that you’re going to pursue.
Celisa Steele: [00:31:03] And then, if you’re solving a brand-new problem or if you’re seizing a brand-new opportunity, that puts you into the nondisruptive creation and growth area. Again, just to give a few examples of that. We’ve mentioned them, but I think it’s always helpful to peg these concepts to specific examples. So, if you’re thinking about that, a breakthrough solution to an industry’s existing problem—that’s the cassette tape to the CD to the MP3 to smartphones, or it’s Netflix largely replacing Blockbuster.
Jeff Cobb: [00:31:35] Or Uber.
Celisa Steele: [00:31:37] Right. That’s an example where Uber didn’t eliminate taxis, but it certainly caused major issues for them. And that’s an important distinction that Kim and Mauborgne make, is that, when you’re dealing with disruptive creation, it doesn’t have to entirely displace an industry, but it needs to do it. It usually does it largely. It really impacts it fundamentally. Blue ocean strategy—you talked about Southwest earlier. Stitch Fix is another example that they give. Basically, Stitch Fix took some demand away from two existing industries, one being online women’s apparel, the other being personal shoppers. So it took a little bit away from each of those existing industries, but it also really expanded demand because it created the option for folks who wouldn’t necessarily have engaged with either. But when you put the two together—this idea of online shopping and personal shoppers and being able to afford fashion at a reasonable price—it pulled in new people. So it was a little disruptive and also nondisruptive.
Jeff Cobb: [00:32:44] And then, for that third area, nondisruptive creation and growth—we’ve referenced Sesame Street, of course, as a type of innovation that did that, and Kickstarter as well. So two examples of that nondisruptive path.
Celisa Steele: [00:32:57] That is our summary of the first half of Beyond Disruption. Remember that we will be coming back in episode 406 with a report on the second half of Beyond Disruption. So that’s when we’ll get more into the how-to. This was more of the conceptual undergirding and looking at the distinction between blue ocean and disruptive types of innovation and then nondisruptive types of innovation.
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