However, our examination also revealed something else that greatly intrigued us. Among the cases that had been added to our original database over time, a few had triggered no disruption or displacement. That piqued our curiosity. Did those cases represent a few unconnected anomalies, or were they the tip of an iceberg, examples of a new kind of innovation? If the latter, why had it been largely overlooked in the literature on innovation and growth? What were its implications for business and society, now and in the future? And was there a process or an approach by which we could conceive and realize this new kind of innovation in a systematic way?

To answer those questions we collected historical and current cases of nondisruptive creation across the for-profit, nonprofit, and public sectors. As we did, we built a growing new database on nondisruptive creation and the managerial actions involved in it.