Dissecting Disruption

For perhaps the last five years, disruption has been one of the most powerful words in business and, if you're not disrupting your industry, you are destined to fall behind. That’s how it is sold. However, if every business hits their big, red ‘disrupt’ button, then is anyone making any real change or is it just allowing chaos to ensue? That’s a misconception I used to have; I was always of the old-school teaching that 'disruption' is inherently negative until a colleague of mine encouraged me to read into positive and creative disruption.

I took on the suggestion (though sceptically at first) and learnt that creative disruption is a concept whereby one actively defies common practice in order to create progress. Any leading business can demonstrate example of this: Amazon disrupted the retail industry by shaping it to convenience the customer throughout their simplified journey; Spotify also put the consumer at the helm and facilitated music streaming, disrupting the music industry in its wake.

Companies such as these have radically facilitated every-day activities and yet, aiming for disruption still does not sit well with me. Businesses speak daily about innovating and disrupting their industry, but I think my unease comes from the misunderstandings that many have around both its meaning and execution. Perhaps it is a semantic issue but too often the word is bandied around by those who aim not to improve something for a common good, but instead to reach private success through irreverence. Of course, it is wrong to follow convention just because it exists, but we also shouldn’t look to deconstruct convention simply because it exists either – that brash nature seems commonplace with businesses who want to seem ballsy to the public eye.

In fact, businesses shouldn’t even aim to be disruptive because true, positive disruption comes as a by-product. It is the result of finding a new solution and opportunity and that doesn’t have to be deconstructive at all. The commonality between Amazon and Spotify is that both invented a new gap in the market and opened up consumers to new possibilities of what they could expect from their retail and entertainment experiences respectively. Neither company threw their weight around and boasted about ‘changing the game’, and yet they both did because rather than seeking out what could be reconfigured, they brought something entirely new to the table.

The point of all this then is that for a company to disrupt its industry, it must be forward-thinking, creative and innovative. Where factors like technology and consumer trends continue to evolve, businesses who can employ technology with unique applications or unlock new insights will have the tools to deliver a creative offering with no immediate competition. Disruption will then take affect and others will quickly try to follow suit in an attempt to not be bested by the superior idea.

Ultimately, the nature of disruption is subjective. Regardless of where you sit on the subject of Brexit for example, you cannot argue that it hasn’t been disruptive and that is because disruption is neither inherently good nor bad – its effect is personal and that is the case in the business world too: those who innovate will inevitably benefit themselves, and harm those who are unable to keep up.