#8—Michael Raynor: Disruptive Innovation & the Urgency of Climate Change Intervention

Disruptive innovation is a term heard around every corner these days. But our default way of thinking about it may have holes in it. In this episode, Michael Raynor discusses a new way of looking at it, in addition to other timely topics.

Michael is a Managing Director with Deloitte LLP where he is part of the team working on developing and implementing Deloitte’s two-track response to the global climate crisis. The first track focuses on reducing and eventually eliminating the firm’s carbon emissions, while the second track comprises a portfolio of efforts designed to mobilize larger ecosystems of organizations—commercial enterprises, NGOs, governments, etc.—to generate an impact on the scale of the problem.

His book "The Strategy Paradox" (2007) was named by Strategy + Business as one of its top five picks in strategy, and BusinessWeek named it one of that year’s 10 Best Business Books.

Michael co-authored The Innovator’s Solution with the late Clayton Christensen and collaborated extensively with Christensen over the years. Another of his books, The Innovator's Manifesto, released in 2011, became a Canadian bestseller, which prompted the Financial Times to call Raynor, "one of the most articulate and interesting of…strategists.”

In addition to discussing the discussing what people assume wrongly about disruptive innovation, Michael also leads us through understanding his concept of the "Strategy Paradox," and to understand the urgency of climate change and what our role is within this near future.

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I'm of a mind that although there's obviously an appropriately increasing awareness and concern about the climate crisis, I continue to believe that for the most part, we have really not come to terms with the urgency and severity of the problem face."

"So you're disruptive as a consequence of your impact on an industry rather than you are disruptive as a consequence of the way in which you have attempted to have an impact. And that's a critically important distinction because what it means is that disruptive innovations are not necessarily successful."

-Michael Raynor

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Episode Timeline:

00:00—Introducing Michael Raynor + The main idea of today’s episode

2:00—If you really knew me, you know that...

2:38—What is your definition of strategy?

3:31—Explaining the concept of tradeoffs

6:15—What got you interested in strategy?

9:07—What are you most known for?

9:50—What are the most important things strategists should know about your work?

12:50—How should the climate question be incorporated into strategy?

16:28—Are we past the point of remedying the global climate change crisis?

17:43—What can a company do to start engaging productively in whatever ecosystem they're in to this common cause?

20:00—Concluding remarks

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Thank you to our guests, thank you to our executive producer, Karina Reyes, our editor, Zach Ness, and the rest of the team. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. I'm your host, Kaihan Krippendorff. Thank you for listening.

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