Conversation

1/ Two possible reasons why sustaining innovation fails to compete with true (external) disruption: finance, sociology
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2/ Finance reason is well known: sustaining innovation looks for measurable, quick top-line impact that disruptive does not show early on
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3/ Sociological reason: due to cooperative nature of work (individual contributions buried), the default internal tribe is the slacker tribe
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4/ Finance reason does not truly explain why "self-disruption" fails (a strong leader *could* get the time constants and $ right)
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7/ Only way to resist that is to create a "full stack" internal tribe with independent soup-to-nuts capability, not just P/L.
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8/ This is impossible in a sufficiently old company because years of cost-discipline ==> shared services. You can't pwn an entire function.
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10/ If marketing, say, hasn't been consolidated and centralized, one marketing node could be pwned exclusively by disruptor tribe
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11/ This means a CEO who wants internal disruption will have to sacrifice *margins* by forgoing organizational efficiencies.
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