How to Disrupt Yourself

How to Disrupt Yourself

I write this piece with apprehension on my mind.

The reason why I am trepidating with fear is because I just got information that shocked me to the marrow.

Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012.

However, Steven Sasson (the inventor of the first digital camera in the world) was an employee of Kodak.

In 1975, two years after he joined Kodak, he showed these devices to his bosses. His bosses were unimpressed and were convinced that nobody would want to look at pictures from a television set.

Kodak’s marketing department also resisted it, because they believed that it will cannibalize film sales.

Sasson filed the patent for the electronic still camera in 1977.

In 1989 Sasson and Robert Hills made the first DSLR camera.

Kodak didn’t embrace the camera, even though they made billions from the digital camera patent until when the patent ran out 30 years later.

I am sure you are pondering, what I am pondering.

May we never see an idea that will make us global leaders and resist it?

However, I begin this piece with a fundamental question:

How do you disrupt yourself?

How frequently do you go back to the drawing board to re-strategize?

Over the years, I have realized that what happens to large organizations is that they resist change, when all is going well. Some organizations even refuse to invest in Research and Development.

Infact, as human beings we like to toe the path to least resistance, we love sitting in our comfort zone.

What we fail to understand is that the ultimate measure of a man is not where he sits during periods of comfort, but how he faces trials and challenges.

These were the words of Martin Luther King many years before the word disruption came on mainstream.

My focus today is not on organizations, but on people, because if we get people to disrupt themselves, then they will disrupt their colleagues, their workplace and eventually transform their organizations.

So back to people, look around you and ask yourself the following questions:

1.       When was the last time you went back to the classroom after your first degree?

2.       When was the last time you tried to learn something new or acquired new skills?

3.       Will you be willing to go back to the classroom to enable you double your earnings?

4.       Will you be eager to set up a research and development in your organization?

5.       Would you be willing to change jobs, even if the payoff will come in 2 to 5 years’ time?

6.       Do you read a book every month?

If you answered NO to any of these questions, then you are not ready to disrupt yourself.

However, if you are ready to disrupt yourself, then you MUST do the following:

A.      Read a book every month (Focus on Business, Economics, Leadership and Religion)

B.      Be adequately Informed (Watch News Channels, Read Business Magazines like HBR, The Economist, Mckinsey Quarterly and every information you can lay your hands on)

C.      Think globally and Act Locally (Travel out of your country/state at least twice a year, and when you do look out for ideas working abroad and bring them back home.)

The founder of Red Bull Dietrich Mateschitz observed the popularity of a cheap energizing drink called Krating Daeng among truck drivers and construction workers when he traveled to Thailand in 1980.

When he discovered that the drink cures his jet lag, he decided to license the product and sell it in Austria under the name Red Bull Energy Drink.

D.      Go back to the classroom preferably a business school, marketing or school of innovation.

My reason: Peter Drucker said and I quote that: Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation.  Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.  

So go back to class and learn how to sell more and keep innovating.

E.       Never stop learning. Tom Peters says that leaders must spend at least 24 days per year in the classroom.

All these things you must do for you to disrupt yourself and stay in the cutting edge world that is becoming highly disruptive.