4. Disruption and nondisruptive creation both have a distinctive role and distinctive consequences

Disruption occurs when you create a new market within the parameters of existing industries. Think of how Amazon disrupted and displaced booksellers and retail stores, or how Uber did the same to the taxi industry. Nondisruptive creation occurs when you create a brand-new market outside the boundaries of existing industries, where there are no established players or markets to displace.

When industries are asleep at the wheel, ineffective, inefficient or produce a marked negative side-effect on the environment or people, they become prime targets for disruption. In contrast, nondisruptive creation does not take aim at an existing industry. Instead, it directs you to solve brand-new problems that no industry currently addresses or create fresh opportunities beyond existing industry boundaries, allowing you to achieve growth without confrontation.

Take Kickstarter, one of the many nondisruptive creators spotlighted in Beyond Disruption. Until Kickstarter came along, most people’s artistic projects went unrealised due to a lack of capital. The company changed that and created a new market beyond the bounds of the traditional finance industry; it didn’t disrupt or eat into venture capital or the banking industries’ profit or growth margins. 

No one lost their job because of Kickstarter and no industry or market players were made worse off. But the artistic community flourished as upwards of US$7 billion in projects were funded and thousands of full- and part-time jobs were created. As for Kickstarter, it was profitable within three years.

Nondisruptive creation conveys four sources of advantage. One, as just alluded to, is it allows you to avoid confronting or taking on established players in achieving innovation and growth. Why poke the bear when there is a way to innovate and grow that won’t spark retaliation?

Another, perhaps more counterintuitive advantage, is it provides a viable response to full-on disruption. If your company faces disruption, you’ll want to understand how you can pivot and counter this with a nondisruptive response. In the book, we cover the two additional advantages – the internal and external stakeholder’s reaction to your attempts at innovation – and explore all four of them in-depth so organisations can broaden their opportunity horizon and responses to the changes arising in the world.