Von: Veit Etzold

Veit Etzold — Thu, 28 Jul 2016 12:12:54 +0000

Als Antwort auf Ömer Atiker. Hi there, thanks for the great thoughts. Will think about it. Best Veit

Von: Ömer Atiker

Ömer Atiker — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 08:48:39 +0000

Lovely story, but…. I like the image of Knights, and how an innovation made them obsolete. It reminded me of another innovation, the stirrup, which came to Europe a few hundred years earlier. It was crucial for the invention of the knights’ powerful attacks with a lance. Besides, I myself use “fighting a dragon” as a metaphor for disruption. The dragon has all the obvious advantages (power, armour, size, wings – and of course fiery breath) and can still be defeated by a knight, who knows where to put the sword…. In relation to today’s business world, I dare to disagree with your story. Yes, the things that used to work well can be a dangerous heritage, rendering companies unable to react to sudden change. And I’m with you all the way, that we should think of value, of what our offer means to the customer, instead of focussing on the actual product or service we provide today. But “new players can disrupt existing markets” isn’t really such a new insight anymore. “The Innovator’s Dilemma”, which coined the term disruption, was published 1997, almost 20 years ago. Also, “successful companies do not wait for others to disrupt them” does sound nice, but is a bit trite. Netflix may be a prime example, but there are so very few of these! What kind of company does really disrupt itself, regularly and successfully? Hardly any. Okay, Apple killed the Sony Walkman with the iPod, then killed the iPod with its own iPhone. IBM managed to move from hardware to services, for which I applaud them. Kloeckner is transforming itself, trying to change the whole steel trading business. But that’s about it. Most companies, even the successful ones (if not to say, especially not the successful ones), do NOT disrupt anything, and definitely not themselves. Because it is not only hard, but often impossible to fundamentally change a larger company. Geoffrey A. Moore (“Zone to win”) is one of the very few who addressed that problem. A corporation built and managed to deliver superior performance, does not have the organisation, the people, the incentives and processes to really build something that kills its own business. Nobody is getting paid to do so, and all performance numbers used to manage are based on existing KPIs. How do you reward wild guesses, which might (or might not) become the next big thing? So “you must disrupt yourself to stay successful” is a pretty rallying cry. It might even have some truth to it. But to actually make that happen is a whole lot of work. It requires both an organisational and a cultural shift, which makes it very hard indeed to implement. Still, we work on that.

Kommentare zu: What medieval knights can teach about disruption – essay bei Veit Etzold for BCG perspectives

Von: Veit Etzold

Von: Ömer Atiker