Ged Carroll

Category: ideas | 想法 | 생각 | 考える

Ideas were at the at the heart of why I started this blog. One of the first posts that I wrote there being a sweet spot in the complexity of products based on the ideas of Dan Greer. I wrote about the first online election fought by Howard Dean, which now looks like a precursor to the Obama and Trump presidential bids.

I articulated a belief I still have in the benefits of USB thumb drives as the Thumb Drive Gospel. The odd rant about IT, a reflection on the power of loose social networks, thoughts on internet freedom – an idea that that I have come back to touch on numerous times over the years as the online environment has changed.

Many of the ideas that I discussed came from books like Kim and Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy.

I was able to provide an insider perspective on Brad Garlinghouse’s infamous Peanut Butter-gate debacle. It says a lot about the lack of leadership that Garlinghouse didn’t get fired for what was a power play. Garlinghouse has gone on to become CEO of Ripple.

I built on initial thoughts by Stephen Davies on the intersection between online and public relations with a particular focus on definition to try and come up with unifying ideas.

Or why thought leadership is a less useful idea than demonstrating authority of a particular subject.

I touched on various retailing ideas including the massive expansion in private label products with grades of ‘premiumness’.

I’ve also spent a good deal of time thinking about the role of technology to separate us from the hoi polloi. But this was about active choice rather than an algorithmic filter bubble.

 

  • November 2023 newsletter – fourth time unlucky?

    November 2023 newsletter introduction

    You’re still reading? Great! Welcome to my November 2023 newsletter which marks my 4th issue.

    Strategic outcomes

    I am not excessively superstitious – but living in Hong Kong rubbed off a bit on me.

    Golden Fortune Cookies

    I developed a love of milk tea, found the ‘hit women’ cathartic and am still leery of the number 4. 

    The number 4 is considered unlucky. In Hong Kong buildings, there is no fourth floor – in a similar way to their being no 13th floor in the UK high rise and office blocks. So I hope that this fourth issue doesn’t bring misfortune.

    The clocks have gone back and the sun rises reluctantly over the horizon every morning, disappearing earlier each afternoon, but that doesn’t mean that inspiration stops. And it will be Christmas before you know it.

    New reader?

    If is your first time reading, welcome to my November 2023 newsletter! You can find my regular writings here and more about me here. 

    Things I’ve written.

    • Dimensions of Luxury based on a mix of stuff that I have read from Sense Worldwide, Horizon Catalyst and books on luxury trends.
    • Every wondered why its dot com rather than full-stop com? So did I.
    • Analysis on IPSOS research on the value to brands of reputation.
    • MCN – multi-channel networks. A business type popular in China and Japan is taking a record label approach to a stable of influencers.
    • A little bit about the Whole Earth Catalogue and more things.
    • The Brand Vandals conversation – reflecting back on a conversation I had in 2012 with Wadds that became part his book Brand Vandals.
    online

    Books that I have read.

    • Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future by Ed Conway. Prior to working in advertising, I had a background in manufacturing and consider myself reasonably well read, but some of the material in Conway’s book was completely new to me. Its narrative approach reminds me of the vintage TV documentary series Connections presented by James Burke, that can be found on YouTube.
    • Beyond Disruption by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne. This book looked at non-disruptive innovation. This is diametrically opposed to the way innovation is discussed in Silicon Valley and the mainstream media. More on my view of it here.
    • The New Working Class by Claire Ainsley. In the advertising industry, we have an acute perception that we might not understand life outside the M25 as we think we do. I thankfully have friends and family in the North to keep me somewhat grounded from the metropolitan elite lifestyle that I lead. Until I read this book, I didn’t realise how grounded the advertising industry was compared to our counterparts in national politics. That this book had to be written is a damning indictment of how out of touch politicos actually are. 

    Things I have been inspired by.

    Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook project – Microsoft, and MIT have worked together to create thousands of free and open audiobooks using text-to-speech technology and Project Gutenberg’s open-access collection of e-books. Via Matt’s Webcurios newsletter.

    IPSOS research video seminar on Unlocking The Value of Reputation. This is the closest I have seen to making the case for earned media activities. The full whitepaper is available here. Thanks to Stuart Bruce for the link!

    My friend Ian recommended the Honest Broker newsletter to me and I have found it to be a great read alongside my long time subscription to Bill Bishop’s Sinocism.

    DDB Remedy’s meta analysis of marketing science work and academic scientific research on how emotion work for effective campaigns. How The Unexpected and Emotion Work to Influence Behaviour Change – focuses on how surprise when paired with emotion led creative had an increased impact. It all makes sense when you think about the power of salience and distinctiveness in communications; but it’s great to see that someone has drawn the multi-disciplinary research together in a cogent argument.

    SEMRush have published a report for 2024 trends in social media platforms: The Vision in a Social Era that is worth downloading and pillaging for ideas that can be sold into clients.

    I don’t know if inspired was the right term to use but I noticed 2023 Girlguiding Girl’s Attitudes survey thanks to a former colleague of mine from the start of my agency career. This is a survey that the Girlguiding movement has run over 15 years. Having freelanced on Dove’s ‘Real Beauty‘ campaign back in the day, this one statistic stood out to me.

    From the 2023 Girlguiding Girl's attitudes survey

    If I were the Dove UK brand director at Unilever, this chart would be pinned to my wall or have it as my laptop wallpaper. You can read the full survey here.

    It isn’t just a UK problem as this article on American teens gives more food for thought: What It’s Like to Be a 13-Year-Old Girl Today – The New York Times. It will be interesting to see if the Nike x Dove Body Confidence initiative makes a difference.

    DeBeers is returning to its ‘A Diamond Is Forever’ campaign. The print campaign image is beautiful with a great use of negative space. DeBeers is spending 20 million dollars on media in the US in China. In the US, I think this makes total sense.

    DeBeers
    DeBeers

    I don’t know how well it will work in China? There isn’t the mental model built up in west over decades around the campaign theme. While the wealthy in China realise that diamonds are recognised as a store of wealth – the guo chao mindset may see gold (and possibly jade) jewellery favoured by at least some younger consumers.

    This has been exacerbated by a decline in the number of marriages by just under 11% and a trend to prefer gold has an 18% reduction in diamonds sold in China over the past 12 months. In the meantime the sale of gold has risen by 12%. 

    I look forward to seeing how the campaign goes.

    According to Numerator, online retail platforms will be the big winners from Christmas shopping. The news for the food and beverage services sector isn’t so great.

    Finally ‘Knowledge is Power with Kidney Disease took me back to 1988. Rob Base has remade It Takes Two for Bohringer Ingelheim in the US to highlight the linkage between kidney disease and type two diabetes. The message is poignant as Base’s creative partner DJ EZ Rock died in 2014 and suffered from diabetes. 

    Producer DJ EZ Rock was responsible for the hype backing track based around Lynn Collins ‘Think (about it)’ and backing vocals from Rhonda Parris. (Parris has a short-lived recording career, releasing just one solo single No, No Love – a bit of a proto-House banger heavily influenced by freestyle if you like that kind of thing). Those that knew also had the Derek B remix of It Takes Two, with a heavy kick drum underpinning from a Roland TR-808 drum machine. 

    Things I have watched. 

    It’s cold and dark and I make no apology for my films being unapologetically escapist and and entertaining to try and counterweight the drab conditions. I do have some standards through and got material for this November 2023 newsletter.

    • Zerozerozero – follows a single drug deal between the Mexican cartel and the ’Ndrangheta. However things don’t go according to plan, so as the conspiracy unfolds we get a walk through the international drug trafficking trade across Latin America, Africa and Europe. This was done as a limited series, but I watched it as a boxset. It is directed by Stefano Sollima who did the Sicario films and Subarra.
    • Novembre – A French fictional dramatisation of the government response to coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris at Stade de France and the Bataclan concert venue through to the Saint Dennis raid that resulted in the death of police dog Diesel, which trended on social media with the #jesuisdiesel hashtag. Jean Dujardin shows the range of his ability as an actor from the comedy of his OSS117 film series, to the deadly seriousness of this film.
    • Diva – I originally watched Diva as part of the Moviedrome series of curated films introduced by Alex Cox. At the time Cox personally disliked the film due to it being ‘a film of style’ rather than narrative. I loved it and revisited it on Blu-Ray. It was sharper and I got to appreciate the Vladimir Cosma soundtrack with its mix of opera, classical music and avant-garde compositions.
    Alex Cox’s introduction to Diva for the much missed Moviedrome film seasons that used to run on BBC 2.
    • The Continental – Amazon Prime Video has some great tentpole content and The Continental adds to this. It’s a prequel of sorts to the John Wick universe and starts with a beautifully made feature length pilot. The action would find it hard to live up to the John Wick films, but the impeccable soundtrack manages to surpass them. The alternative past New York of the film has similar vibes to shows like Pennyworth and Gotham. 

    Useful tools

    Better Miro, Mural or Figjam alternative

    I have started using Milanote as an alternative to Miro for personal projects. Like Miro it has a mix of templates to get you started. There is an iPhone app and a native Mac app, so you don’t have to rely on running resource hungry pages in your internet browser of choice. It might even replace Omnigraffle in my personal software stack for some of the tasks that I do.

    Milanote

    The sales pitch.

    It was great to collaborate this month with my Hong Kong and Shanghai-based friends at Craft Associates on a prospective exciting new project. Now taking bookings for strategic engagements or discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.

    The End.

    Ok this is the end of my November 2023 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other. Let me know what you think or if you have any recommendations to be featured in forthcoming issues. 

  • Value of reputation + more stuff

    Value of reputation

    The value of reputation is something that various disciplines especially the public relations industry discuss ad infinitum. IPSOS have put together some interesting research and thinking that helps to quantify and shape the value of reputation. Previous discussions on reputation value that I have seen, haven’t had the same rigour behind them. The presenter calls out the assertions of former Unilever Paul Pollman as misleading.

    Unlocking the value of reputation key takeaways

    • Shareholder value and reputation don’t necessarily correlate contrary to the assertions of Unilever’s former CEO Paul Pollman.
    • A better reputation means that advertising becomes more effective: more believable and more memorable.
    • A better reputation means that consumers are more likely to pay a premium for a product (however this is relative within category).
    • The value of reputation varies by region. It’s stronger in Latin America than the UK, Europe or many Asian markets, but weaker in Africa and the Middle East.
    • The value of reputation parleys into brand trust and brand resilience. A personal example of this for me was the wayUK consumers were much more supportive of the BP than American consumers during the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

    Thanks to Stuart Bruce, I managed to get the full white paper that can be found here.

    This is Financial Advice

    This is Financial Advice is one of the best films that I have seen about the GameStop short squeeze.

    Studio Ghibli music

    While Japanese production company Studio Ghibli is recognised for its animation, the specially composed music is a key part of its ambience. It also happens to be great music for listening to while working. There’s a 120 hours of Ghibli related musical playlists here.

    https://youtu.be/Cdp2qXHD96U?si=eaiL43V2J7K08Atv

    Metal morphosis. Made Untamed

    Toyota Australia were promoting the Toyota GR Corolla. This is the Corolla version of a GR Yaris. Same mechanicals, but five doors and a larger body shell. The Yaris was not made available in some markets such as the US and Australia, instead they got the larger car.

    The creative is a mix of animation relying on precise high speed driving and a set course reminiscent of the late Ken Block’s Gymkhana series of films. The gymkhana series was in turn influenced by skate videos. Prior to being a rally driver, Block had co-founded Droors and DC Shoes prior to running his car culture brand Hoonigan and driving professionally.

  • Humane AI pin + more things

    Humane AI pin

    The Humane AI pin has been hyped for a while. Now it’s been launched as a product with what seems to be a small initial batch based on a waiting list and drop type distribution model. I thought I would wait a bit to post on the Humane AI pin and let the dust settle.

    The Humane AI pin is an interesting take on a personal device. particularly with its ‘AI experience’ switching – picking the right smarts for the right task. This seem to fulfil the kind of vision that the likes of Kevin Kelly have outlined in the past. It also seems to access communications services like messaging services and the audio design in the product seems interesting. There is also a projected interface of sorts on the Humane AI pin. It’s an interesting alternative direction to the spatial computing vision of Apple’s Vision Pro.

    humane ai pin

    The Humane AI device falls down in being such a network-centric device. Although it has onboard machine learning technology, its reliance on a relationship with T-Mobile US’ cellular network is problematic. Cellular connectivity is not ubiquitous. It is one of several device visions that have been articulated over the years, but what I still don’t understand is the ‘why?’

    What’s going to be more interesting is what the Humane AI pin does next?

    Beauty

    How Chinese influencer Li Jiaqi’s outburst turned the poster child of C-beauty into a laughing stock

    China

    China’s first deficit in foreign investment signals West’s ‘de-risking’ pressure | Reuters

    US law firms rethink China future amid economic woes, data crackdown | Reuters – Of the 73 largest U.S. law firms with a presence in China, 32 shrank their attorney presence in the last decade, according to a Reuters review of data from Leopard Solutions, which tracks law firm hiring. In Beijing, 26 of the 48 largest U.S. law firms drew down their presence since 2018. Worthwhile reading with: US consultancy Gallup withdraws from China | FT – market research was sensitive when I worked in China. Gallup’s business was closer to consulting than a pollster to get around these challenges. Interesting that they can no longer thread the needle in China

    China’s family-run businesses face succession challenges – Nikkei Asia – more than 80% of China’s 1 billion private enterprises are family-owned, with about 29% of these businesses in traditional manufacturing. From 2017 to 2022, around three-quarters of China’s family businesses are in the midst of a generational leadership transition

    Economics

    Fading prosperity and global shipping surplus pose challenges | DigiTimes

    Maersk cuts 10,000 jobs as shipping demand falls – BBC News

    Energy

    Shipowners urged to protect vessels against electric-car fires | FT

    Russia’s weaker hand undermines case for Power of Siberia 2 gas link to China | Reuters

    FMCG

    Post-pandemic party’s over as Americans shun cognac | FT – Half of all cognac in the US is drunk by African Americans, a demographic that has been disproportionately affected by the cost of living crisis, according to analysis by Bernstein. The skew to African American consumers is in part due to the fact that French spirits producers ignored the segregation mandated by America’s Jim Crow laws and “cultivated the African American market segment in ways that other producers did not,” said David Crockett, professor of marketing at the University of Illinois Chicago. French spirits producers at the time marketed to Black-owned and targeted publications. As early as the 1970s the advertisements conveyed a message of upward socio-economic mobility, said Naa Oyo Kwate, a sociologist at Rutgers University

    Sprite Ads Starred Rappers When Hip-Hop Was Young

    25-Year Lasagna, Special Ops Oatmeal, and the Survival Food Boom | WIRED

    Finance

    The BofA $136B Dynamite Stick – Puck – treasury bond related losses.

    Health

    Did the Carpal Tunnel Epidemic Ever Really End? – The Atlantic

    Plain packaging on cereal? The obesity crisis is far more complex | Comment and Opinion | The Grocer

    Hong Kong

    The Hong Kong Activist Who Called Washington’s Bluff – The Atlantic – The United States praised Joshua Wong and pledged itself to Hong Kong’s freedom. But when China cracked down, Wong found himself with nowhere to go….

    Wong wanted to enter the U.S. consulate. The diplomats told him that only the rooms in the St. John’s Building were on offer, and that the office tower did not offer the protection of a diplomatic compound. In Washington, Ngo took the matter up with one of Hawley’s policy advisers, reasoning that the ultra-Trumpian senator might have the president’s ear. Responding at 1 a.m., Hawley’s staffer promised to pass the message on to his boss, but nothing changed. On July 1, the national-security law passed. The diplomats’ positions were the same: Wong couldn’t enter the consulate and couldn’t apply for asylum from outside the United States. Wong and Ngo knew the rules. But they were asking for the same pathway to haven that had been granted to Fang and Chen…

    The focus in Washington has moved on from Hong Kong to Taiwan. The island is under constant military threat from Beijing, which claims the territory as its own, even though the Chinese Communist Party has never controlled it. But for those in Taiwan who cherish their democracy, Hong Kong’s story offers a cautionary tale. The United States gave Hong Kong’s cause its vocal backing, then abandoned the city in its time of greatest need.

    Bored Ape crypto fans report ‘eye burn’ after Hong Kong party | FT – this comes on the back of safety problems of a Mirror concert at a local arena in July 2022.

    This city never slept. Now with China tightening its grip, is the party over? | CNN Business

    Asia is much more important to U.S. interests than the Middle East | Noahpinion – East Asian cities like Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, and until recently, Hong Kong are arguably the world’s most magnificent — hyper-dense and efficient and bustling with life and creativity and personal freedom, but also extremely safe. East Asia is a wealthy region with high quality of life across the board, rivaled only by North Europe and parts of the Anglosphere. Maciej Cegłowski called them “Zeroth World”, and I think that is an apt description. – the burn for Hong Kong on this is real

    Ideas

    The challenges of sustainable societies and solar punk.

    The one where Chandler Bing’s impenetrable job defined a generation | FT – André Spicer, Executive Dean of Bayes Business School, suggests a new category altogether: a “Chandler Bing job”, one indifferent to finding meaning, “low on existential rewards but relatively high on extrinsic rewards, like pay and promotion”. Chandler’s stoicism more broadly reflects Gen X’s tacit acceptance of their lot: the forgotten latchkey kids squished between the Baby Boomers and the Millennials. Jennifer Dunn, author of Friends: A Cultural History, says he “showed that we might not all find fulfilment in the first, or even the longest lasting job we will ever have.” Compared to today’s employers who are increasingly concerned about making their younger colleagues happy, few cared about Gen X’s work-life balance.

    Korea

    Korea’s brutal economy.

    Luxury

    Skims and Swarovski Announce Collaboration | BoF – body jewellery, underwear and ready-to-wear pieces in range, launched in Swarovski shores.

    Morgan Stanley’s Top 20 Swiss Watch Company Ranking for 2023 | Professional Watches

    Former Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld says ‘no one’ wanted to dress Kim Kardashian | The Independent

    Marketing

    IPA and ISBA Launch Industry Principles for Use of Generative AI in Advertising | LBBOnline

    Media

    Chinese tech executive Chen Shaojie, CEO of DouYu, said to be held ‘incommunicado’ after authorities find porn on popular live-streaming platform | South China Morning Post

    John Battelle’s Search Blog Why Prime Time TV Might Make a Comeback | Battelle Media

    Is the Music Business Losing Money to Sped-Up Song Remixes? – Billboard

    Tech In Asia gets the exit and acquirer we all expected | Asian Tech Review – acquired by Singapore Press Holdings

    Online

    Israel-Gaza war fuels online anti-Semitism, Islamophobia in China | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera

    Short-Form War | No Mercy / No Malice – TikTok as weapon, chances are China has its thumb on the direction of the algorithm

    Why Puma Sees a Future in Virtual Products, Despite the NFT Bust | BoF

    Did SEO experts ruin the internet or did Google? – The Verge

    The OpenAI Keynote – Stratechery by Ben Thompson – OpenAI as consumer technology company

    Retailing

    Kantar’s O’Donnell Unravels The Secrets To Gaining Unplanned Purchases – NCA

    TikTok Shop Sellers Make Money From Viral Products but Fear Penalties | Business Insider – why can’t TikTok shop handle viral product demand?

    Shein’s US head of strategy on the company’s business model

    Fortnum & Mason resumes delivery to the EU following Brexit troubles – Retail Gazette

    Security

    Big Brother Unchained: UK Government to Abolish Biometrics and Surveillance Safeguards As It Embraces Facial Recognition | naked capitalism

    Software

    Apple is Heavily Invested In Generative AI While Samsung Seeks Help From Microsoft’s ChatGPT And Google’s Bard

    This Cheat Sheet Can Help You Unlock ChatGPT’s Full Potential

    What are the autonomous car levels? Levels 1 to 5 of driverless vehicle tech explained | CAR Magazine

    How AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Bard work – visual explainer | Technology | The Guardian

    Xiaomi launches home-grown cross-device system with HyperOS, as US-sanctioned Huawei moves further from Google’s Android | South China Morning Post – not a lot of detail in the underpinnings at launch but imagine that it will have Linux at the heart

    Taiwan

    The US is quietly arming Taiwan to the teeth – BBC News

    Technology

    Apple unveils M3 processor threeseome for Mac computers | EE News Europe as a counterpart to
    Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit – The Gauntlet – Radio Free Mobile

    Telecoms

    Starlink’s competition: Astranis.

    Web of no web

    BMW ConnectedRide smartglasses bring head-up displays to eyewear | CAR Magazine

    MB.OS: How Mercedes’ new software push gives it a direct line to customers | CAR Magazine – at the end of the day this looks like a dystopian Dubai night club, but without bottle service and ‘hostesses’

  • The New Working Class

    The New Working Class by Claire Ainsley is unashamedly wonkish in nature. Ainsley comes from the left of the political establishment. She is an executive director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. She had previously worked for Unite and as a government advisor.

    Ainsley posits that the Labour Party is out of touch of who the working class are and what they care about. Deindustrialisaton and immigration has changed the nature of what working class means. They might have lower middle class incomes working in the services sector. Traditional blue collar roles declined to represent about 14 percent of the British population.

    Ainsley’s The New Working Class is a testimony to how out of touch policy makers and advisers with the society that they claim to represent. This also makes wonder about the usefulness, and or, the attention paid to polling and research done by political parties in the UK. The Conservatives understanding of hard-working families shows at least some understanding at a high level of who the new working class are.

    What struck me about the book is that much of the ‘new’ working class isn’t actually that new at all. The struggle to make ends meet is one that Orwell would have recognised the best part of a century earlier. The challenge of unemployment is one that haunted much of the 1970s and 1980s.

    Family is still important and while society is secular, working class communities have been more socially conservative. That doesn’t mean that they hate gays or immigrants, they take a common sense approach to fairness but they will be concerned about family. The rate of change in society and the desire for working opportunities has been more of a driver over immigration than outright racism back to the rise of Enoch Powell.

    I had thought I would gain new consumer insights in the same way that I have had in the past, reading books by like likes of American pollster Mark Penn, but this wasn’t the case with Ms Ainsley’s book. Ms Ainsley has clearly written for a different audience. Instead of the ‘new new’ insight, her work is a 101 guide for politicos to the society that the profess to live in and represent. That scared the hell out of me. More on the book here. You can find more book reviews here.

  • Beyond Disruption

    Beyond Disruption by W Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne moves their focus from general business strategy in their book Blue Ocean Strategy. You can read my review of Blue Ocean Strategy which I originally read a number of years ago. By contrast this book looks at the idea of non-disruptive innovation. Non-disruptive innovation as a topic makes sense within the blue ocean / red ocean model.

    Beyond Disruption
    Beyond Disruption book cover

    Success has its own challenges.

    Kim and Mauborgne face a Augean literary challenge. Blue Ocean Strategy was so successful at the time, that any subsequent book will look diminished in its success by comparison. Blue Ocean Strategy had something for everyone. To marketers it spoke of differentiation and salience, for business management types it was about differentiation and innovation. Beyond Disruption delves deeper into the nature of that innovation in a way that Blue Ocean Strategy didn’t.

    In Beyond Disruption the authors posit that their blue ocean strategy approach was a blend of disruptive and non-disruptive growth.

    Difficult narratives

    Disruptive innovation by its very nature means destruction of existing businesses as a new one is created. A classic example of this would be the battles between regulators and taxi drivers with Uber, or city governments looking to protect the needs of their citizens from AirBnB. The ideas of Joseph A. Schumpeter fit in with the innovation stories coming out of Silicon Valley. Apple and Google didn’t invent the smartphone, but they came up with a design that captured larger scale consumer interest than Nokia devices and captured the market.

    It is the predominant narrative in the media and business community at the moment around innovation. Disruptive innovation fits in with the conflict driven narrative of business. It is reinforced by adaption of military thinking in a literal manner to business strategy. The authors themselves point out about how much business decision-making is driven by aggression and fear.

    Approach of Beyond Disruption

    The approach of Kim & Mauborgne to ‘nondisruptive creation’ in Beyond Disruption is broken into two parts which cover

    • What it is and why it matters.
    • How to realise nondisruptive creation.

    What it is and why it matters

    Kim and Mauborgne focus a lot of time in the first part of the book explaining the economic and social impact of non-disruptive creation. The idea is that creating new markets doesn’t destroy existing marketplaces. In theory, value will be created on top of the existing economic order, rather than being substitutive in nature.That narrative is largely true, but there are exceptions to bear in mind.

    If we think about the smartphone as a device category, even prior to Apple and Google displacing Nokia, cell phones were displacing existing categories. Sales of answerphones dropped, as did the sales of chocolate to children and the incidence of children smoking. Instead the pocket money was spent on handsets and PAYG (pay as you go) mobile tariffs.

    Beyond Disruption outlines four sources of business advantage to non-disruptive creation:

    • Avoiding direct confrontations with established incumbents.
    • An effective way to respond to full-on disruption.
    • Support from internal stakeholders who will view non-disruptive innovation as less emotionally charged.
    • No evident backlash from external stakeholders.

    The authors see this approach as a way to address the challenges of ESG and the fourth industrial age of automation.

    How to realise non-disruptive creation

    The authors start with the idea of the right perspective. This involves:

    • Leaders moving away from the ‘startup story’ of an innovative founder or co-founder. Instead the problem to be solved needs to be recognised first.
    • Don’t confuse the means with the end.
    • Focus on the many, not the few. Have a product that is likely to be adopted by a range of customers.

    Identifying opportunities is considered in a separate section, the key point of which was the idea of empathetically observing newly emerging or unexplored problems. These ideas can then be explored further by understanding the scale of the challenge (amount of people affected etc) and understand the assumptions others have made that persuaded them to avoid the opportunity.

    In conclusion

    With Beyond Disruption, Kim and Mauborgne are looking to encourage a business more in keeping with the needs of stakeholder capitalism. More on Beyond Disruption here.