Disruption as a definition has never sat well for me. Originally coined in 1995 by Harvard Business School professors Clayton Christensen and Joseph Bower in their article “Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave”.

Disruption as they defined it was the process where a smaller company with fewer resources successfully challenged established incumbents. Simple enough, but post their published work we saw the development of reliable, cheap and widely available high-speed internet connection with smart phones to access it.

Suddenly transformation and/or disruption became a thing to describe all business success in the digital age. With increasingly efficient technology outflanking the more traditional barriers to market it’s easy to see why, but by definition it now seems outdated. The cause and effect wave of disruptive technologies appears to have already crashed on to the beach, and somewhat receded.

So should we continue to label disruption and transformation to describe technologically enabled ‘transitions’ to meet changing consumer behaviour? To do so confuses what is happening and provides poor advice on how brands and businesses should respond.

It is tempting to explain away older business ecosystems as analogue product distribution methods. Emboldened with hindsight we have all been guilty of parading high profile declines of once successful brands as victims of disruptive, digitally led competitors. But that belies the consumer harmonies created by their competitors, the better customer experiences offered and the evolutionary models long ignored by incumbents. Even in the most famous examples we all love talking about – Uber, Airbnb and Amazon to name a few – the idea of these being sudden disruptive moments in business transformation misrepresents a lot of the change and resulting timescales taken to achieve it.

In 2015 I recall sitting down with the CEO of Fanduel, Nigel Eccles, on a working trip to Vegas and discussing the explosive growth of Daily Fantasy Sports in the US (a category enjoying that was USD$8b then and stands at USD$18b today). Nigel was the toast of the G2E Gaming Expo that year. He was also named a Forbes magazine 30 under 30 ‘game changer’ for the runaway success of the business he founded in Fanduel. He was somewhat bemused by my star struck, but innocent question how did you succeed so quickly? “We are what I call the five year overnight success,” he replied. In the start-up snake pit, said Eccles, “there is nothing overnight about it”.

The myth of disruption

So is disruption dead because it never really existed? I can’t help think that at best it was only ever an innovation theory about why businesses failed. Darwinian-like extinctions, misdiagnosed and evangelised by an army of contemporary consultants who used it as a headline, a prophecy of doom and ultimately a solution to sell their services. All in the name of future-proofing, preventing a client’s fall at the hands of the ‘digitally fittest’.

Holistically believing in this disruptive hype threatens business continuity in three ways. First, executive teams become so beguiled by talk of disruption and transformation they lose sight of the more boring, but critically important business antonyms of continuity, and transition. Secondly aggressive pursuit of ‘transformation’ moves a culture from a learning, evolutionary approach in problem solving to a less governed ‘instinctive’ one. Third, and most importantly, it prevents long-term cultural development within a business to establish successful ‘test and learn’ policies as a way of innovating via incremental augmentation.

Put simply, the fail fast and move on advice is often a costly one, more than most like to admit. Failures also dent an organisation’s confidence. It’s often said that people gravitate to success when momentum builds and while that may be so, one thing is for sure: people run a freakin’ mile from failure. Failed Innovation projects are disowned internally as quickly as a school bag is dropped at the sound of the afternoon bell.

It’s creating a common problem. According to most market reports, about 70-75 per cent of all large transformation projects fail. A Forbes Insights survey of 534 global executives in 2020 showed that 48 per cent of executives believe their organisation is “only somewhat” or “not at all prepared” to successfully execute a business transformation. The top three reasons cited for failure were inefficiency, resources shortages and above all not enough investment. It seems Boards don’t like the ‘Cost of Change’ that often accompanies these projects through to maturity. Well, what a surprise!

However, a culture of innovation that can survive and flourish long-term and avoid flash in the pan abrasive innovation hubs is essential. The failure of ill-advised esoteric pursuits of tomorrow should not lead to head in the sand denial; this is as equally dangerous as instinctively chasing pipe dreams. To avoid these pitfalls leaders should remind themselves that technological breakthroughs and the creation of new infrastructure is incredibly rare. It’s never an overnight success or demise. But the increasing pace of change in business is real, so too is the rise of antipathetic legislative environments. The UK’s High Fat, Salt and Sugar (HFSS) regulation on advertising is a case and point. So an executive-sanctioned, balanced innovation culture must be built-in and the best ones are ‘customised’ transitory paths to innovate for the longer term.

Food for thought

Gawking out of the proverbial window at a business car crashes and claiming hindsight is not the answer, instead look to success. The Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) industry is an instructive example, one that has transitioned in the face of significant (evolutionary) change rather than opting for transformational. It provides a blueprint in how to throw your weight around as a large retail brand to get first party data, but avoid boiling the ocean in order to get it.

A few years ago working in this industry I witnessed Uber Eats go from launch in Australia to turning over in excess of $1bn in online food sales in its first year of operation. To put Uber’s diversified product launch (ride share to food delivery share) in perspective, our holding group with multiple QSR brands, large national footprints had not achieved that milestone despite 50 years in business, household brand-named success and excellent operations. Maturity in business inevitably cycles to incrementalism (1-2 per cent growth) and it’s a hard jail to escape.

It would be easy to label Uber Eats as another example of disruption and transformation. However, Uber was well advanced technologically and with a readymade customer base before diversifying. Equally online ordering of food and getting it delivered to someone’s home was not new. But Uber Eats did make that service better. Instead of offering a singular cuisine, it evolved the online ordering service to become a virtual food court. In response, established QSR brands mostly avoided direct, disruptive responses to that threat. Instead of counter offensives they leveraged aggregators like Uber Eats. By avoiding direct hand-to-hand combat with a digitally-led market entrant, they in turn attracted new customers and engaged existing ones. A successful transitionary approach of mature businesses integrating into a new, highly evolved technical marketplace.

For some (like McDonald’s) this partnership and operational assimilation led to first party data control while securing efficient methods of last mile delivery. The temptation to disrupt, or transform as an industry heavyweight to counter in this instance would have been high, but pursuing their own end-to-end solution would have been costly, unsuccessful (singular cuisine) and leave them lumbered with unsustainable maintenance and FTE costs for their franchisees. Despite all the noise in food delivery, Drive Thru’s (DTs) are still pretty convenient, and still the majority of total sales. New sales channels are great, but not at the expense of older, more profitable ones and certainly not at the expense of your core product.

So disruption is dead, long live disruption. But the need for long-term and sustainable innovation to future-proof a business is very much alive. If a brand is to be successful in future-proofing themselves by creating indissoluble business models, they must go after innovation with a long-term assiduous commitment, avoid the attraction to disrupt, and recognise that short-term upheaval versus long-term transition is a value exchange they must get right.