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I’m all for innovation. Getting involved in new ways of thinking and making changes is exciting and a great thing, and I am a huge advocate for change and evolution, especially in the business environment.
My only gripe with this era of great change is the terminology that seems completely embedded in the conversation, and I think by just altering the semantics, we can probably more effectively enable positive change in every industry, particularly when it comes to innovative processes.
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What is ‘disruption’?
In the context of innovation, to disrupt a process is usually understood to be a piece of technology or idea that disturbs and alters the outcome or direction of an existing practice, ultimately highlighting the use of innovative schools of thought and attempting to bring this technology or idea to the market.
Disruption is all about stopping a process and fundamentally changing it, to either discover or promote a new idea. In many cases, there are largely positive results from purposefully seeking change and how to bring it about in particular situations, but the overuse of the term ‘disruption’ is getting out of hand.
The case for disruption
The role that buzzwords ultimately play is that of inspiring a trend and creating an atmosphere of open communication and conversation, and this has definitely worked in the space of innovation.
Cities all over the world are attempting to create innovation hubs, reflecting the likes of Silicon Valley, or more recently, Tel Aviv, even going so far as to put on new incarnations of the Disrupt event hosted by TechCrunch in the US.
This is certainly promoting not just the spirit of innovative thinking, but also the practicalities of bringing an idea to the marketplace, and then battling it out against other similar companies to value the best idea and how realistic it is as a business venture, with funds for that exact purpose being up for grabs.
Inspiring young people to think outside the box and come up with business ideas is great, but the fact is that by its very nature, disrupting is no longer the best way to think about moving forward, and it may, in fact, be pulling us back from true growth.
The problem with disrupting
First of all, one of the major issues with disrupting is that in some senses, it has become a buzzword so popular that it has begun to lose its meaning. By constantly referring to ‘disrupting the space’, companies can appear to be fitting in with this new trend without actually making any major change or bringing anything new to the table.
Fundamentally, in addition to this, disruption is in the business of stopping and restarting, which is part of the reason why I don’t think it’s the best method for moving forward in the most productive way. Surely, it would be more efficient and effective to continuously build upon current ideas and work more collaboratively rather than constantly starting from scratch.
I like to take a more direct path by building rather than disrupting in the innovation space – to truly develop ideas and products to their full potential, rather than competing and racing down a disruptive routine.
Please don’t get me wrong, there is definitely a time when a ‘shake-up’ is necessary, and the idea of disrupting is important and significant in order to keep moving forward as a society throughout all sorts of industries and ideas.
However, my personal approach for rapid and continued growth is less about disruption and more about easing into changes required by creating workplaces of collaboration. Doing this with a culture that thrives on activity, rather than dealing with complex change management issues, enables concepts to come to their full fruition, and important change can continue with minimal disruption to existing business.
