Disruptive Innovation: Handle With Care

It feels like we’ve passed peak disruption.
Does innovation have to be such a zero-sum game?

When a certain US presidential candidate trades on being ‘the great disruptor’, you’ve got to question whether it’s the right way to approach disruption. There are also signs that consumers are turning their backs on disruptor brands – from dating apps to fast fashion.

A skim of business media – Forbes, Wired, Fast Company – suggests that the people who hold the purse strings still have an appetite for disruption. And the language is destructive; from ‘vulnerable industries’ to ‘exploiting volatility’.

You can see how this approach works for sectors like utilities, finance and transport. We all know these are hardly user-friendly, are dominated by sleepy laggards and would benefit from a revolutionary rethink. But consumer brands have to ask themselves if disruption is what people actually want.

Because disruption is often a zero sum game. The winner can’t win unless it creates losers.

• Eve disrupted mattresses, but created landfill.

• Airbnb disrupted hotels, but diluted the souls of communities

• Tinder disrupted dating, but made romance robotic.

• Brewdog disrupted brewing, but created a toxic internal culture.

These outcomes are often unintended. But it feels like the disruptors benefit a lot more than the end user. And there’s a shift from a category with healthy competition, to one where the winner takes all and the brands that established the category decline.

It comes from disruptors’ passionate disrespect for what they want to disrupt. So they sweep in, lay waste to the competition and pillage all the value.

Positive, enduring, people-centric innovation doesn’t need to be destructively disruptive. And it can benefit both business, consumer and category.

FMCG categories benefit most from innovation that increases their overall value. It doesn’t have to be forceful, flashy or disrespectful of the competition. Instead it builds off existing benefits.

For example:

• A 0% beer that tastes good

• a mainstream chocolate with sustainable origins

• a period care brand designed by women

• a pet food made with recognisable ingredients

These are all incremental improvements that make big differences, without demanding new behaviours. Most importantly consumers really want, need and value them – they’re happy to pay more because they’re better, not just different. There’s no hidden harm and the new brands put positive pressure on incumbent brands to improve too.

This kind of innovation works and lasts because it puts humans before disruption. Our brains and bodies have stayed pretty much the same for millennia. Unless a category has fallen asleep (that’s you water utilities) continuity with the past has a stronger appeal than disruptive discontinuity.