During a presentation on innovation management recently, I was discussing the fact that disruption does not only affect the disrupted industry, but the disrupting organisation as well. When a new offer obeys radically different rules, the environment needed to create it successfully must often conform to a new set of rules as well. Skunkworks and spinoffs are two well-known solutions to this problem.
The text on my slide which summarised this discussion read:
Innovation is becoming increasingly disruptive – not only for the disruptees, but also for the disruptors themselves. Organisations may no longer discard a good idea with the argument, „This idea does not fit us.“ Instead, they must ask, „How can we fit ourselves to this idea?„
Looking over the slide once again, I think it makes the point quite neatly.