How does disruptive innovation occur? Who makes it happen?
Big corporations take action with the sole purpose of reinforcing their past successes, it’s in their DNA. They attempt to innovate by assembling a bunch of “special” people, putting them in “special” think tanks or labs, create “special” clusters for innovation, confirm their decisions with the “special” pipeline of options, and then fancy the “special’ moment in time when it all clicked. But disruptive innovation never clicks because this is not how it occurs. Disruptive innovation is not created by one special person at one special moment in time. Innovation is the result of cumulative collaboration over time, by groups of passionate people who see no other option but to pursue their passion. Disruptive innovation requires a new set of skills, elite skills, that the status quo can not grasp or relate to.
Rap music is a great example of disruptive innovation and the process of creating it. Today, rap is responsible for more 50 percent of the music industry’s sales revenue. But, it was not the major record labels that made rap music what it is today. Like big corporations in other industries, the powerful music companies didn’t embrace rap music until rap music began to capture main stream popularity and producing record breaking sales numbers. It took ten to fifteen years for rap music to become a major player in the music industry, but once the disruption occurred the momentum was unstoppable.
Rap was born in NYC, out of densely populated African American and Latino neighborhoods in the mid 70s. The street style, talking about the hurdles of the tough NYC streets, gained popularity at neighborhood parties, local park concerts, and the NYC club scene. Lacking money for instruments, the DJs and MCs used new technology, multiple turn tables to mix in funky beats from popular rock, disco, and blues albums as the background for their lyrical expressions. They also invented new skills, scratching and mixing multiple records simultaneously. The standard for creative lyrics, scratching, and mixing was exceptionally high. Rap music was not the result of a single rapper on a single night, but evolved as a passionate group movement, holding each other to highest standards over time. Rather than waiting for the major record labels to embrace them, Rappers created and built their own record labels, challenging the existing titans’ and changing the status quo and becoming the status quo.
Empire took a similar path as disruptive rap music, beginning as an aggressive New York City sales culture with the discipline for continuous improvement and the determination to win.
Empire isn’t the product of one magical moment or one special person, but the result of a cumulative and collaborative development over time. Lacking the money to afford a “special” training institute, campus, or office, this passionate group used modern technology to develop PEPPER, which resulted in the ability to expertly improve sales and leadership skills without an office or central location. Empire and PEPPER are doing do more with less. And now, seven years later we are close to hitting the main stream. Perhaps, just like rap music, it will take 15 years before Empire and PEPPER play a role in training more than 50 percent of the sales people in the world, but either way, the momentum has started and we won’t stop until we replace the status quo as the status quo.
Remember, disruptive innovation is not driven by one special person at a unique moment or by big the financial muscle of big corporations. Innovation is the result of passionate groups of people with elite skills, who hold each other accountable to the highest standards. Disruptive innovation is a cumulative and collaborative development.