Hasta La Ideas

Luke Williams’ new book Disrupt opens with a quote from Jerry Garcia, so you know it’s going to be different: “We do not merely want to be the best of the best. We want to be the only ones who do what we do.” That said, Williams’ core thesis is not a new one: The only way for a business to succeed is to cultivate disruptive innovation, even if it disrupts their existing business.

The strategy of incremental improvement used by most major companies is virtually guaranteed to paint them into a corner because real change happens not only in increments but also in sudden fits and starts. Williams refers to the late Stephen J. Gould’s idea of punctuated equilibrium and he’s right. Much like Steven Johnson’s recent book Where Good Ideas Come From which would serve as a nice companion, Disrupt observes that innovation continues at a gradual pace and builds upon the work of others, but once sufficient structures are in place (often from other fields) to enable innovation, change happens disruptively and is virtually assured.

Like most other business books on the shelf, Williams uses examples drawn from today’s business world along with his experiences consulting at frog. Usually after an assortment of anecdotes the reader is left with a set of scattered conclusions and no easy means for putting those conclusions into use. In Disrupt, Williams not only connects his mode of thinking to entrepreneurs who have successfully turned disruptive ideas into profitable businesses, but he also leaves readers with future references and templates for executing his methods. If Disrupt represents a disruption to the way of doing business, it does so not by aggressively changing the nature of a business book, but instead by clearly enumerating the tools that entrepreneurs need to craft their own disruptive hypothesis.

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