761: Notice Disruption and Innovate Through It, with Steve Blank

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Dec 1, 2025

Steve Blank, an adjunct professor and pioneer of the Lean Startup movement, shares his insights on recognizing and navigating disruption. He reflects on historical examples, like carriage makers transitioning to automobiles, emphasizing that visionary founders drive significant pivots rather than hired CEOs. Blank warns of structural disincentives that hinder businesses from innovating, urging mid-level managers to evaluate their companies' commitment to real innovation. He distinguishes between 'innovation theater' and genuine progress, advocating for measurable outcomes over superficial demos.

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ANECDOTE

Horseless Carriages Look Familiar

Early automobiles looked like carriages without horses because makers borrowed carriage designs.
They were noisy, unreliable, and initially worse on key customer dimensions than carriages.

INSIGHT

Redefine Your Business, Not Just The Product

Studebaker survived by redefining its business from "carriages" to "mobility."
That shift let them retool factories and retrain workers to become an automobile maker.

INSIGHT

Founders See Over The Horizon

Founders spot and pursue long-horizon bets more often than hired CEOs.
Their willingness to risk everything enables companies to survive disruptive shifts.

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Steve Blank: Blind to Disruption

Steve Blank is an Adjunct Professor at Stanford and co-founder of the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation. Credited with launching the Lean Startup movement and the curriculums for the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps and Hacking for Defense and Diplomacy, he’s changed how startups are built, how entrepreneurship is taught, how science is commercialized, and how companies and the government innovate. Steve is the author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany and The Startup Owner’s Manual and is the author of his recent article at steveblank.com: Blind to Disruption: The CEOs Who Missed the Future.

Leaders may see the future coming, but we aren’t always incentivized to act on it. In this conversation, Steve and I discuss what we can learn from the common patterns of disruption so we don’t miss what’s next.

Key Points

In the 1890s, there were approximately 4,000 carriage and wagon makers in the United States. Only one company made the transition to automobiles.
In each of the three companies that survived, it was the founders, not hired CEOs, that drove the transition.
Studebaker recognized that it wasn’t in the business of carriages; it was in the business of mobility.
Clayton Christensen taught us that disruption begins with inferior products that incumbents don’t take seriously.
The real problem isn’t that companies can’t see the future. It’s that they are structurally disincentivized to act on it.
Parsing innovation theatre vs. innovation means paying attention to what’s actually shipping. If nothing is and you want to innovate, look elsewhere.
Bubbles in the market are normal. Timing may be off, but that doesn’t mean disruption isn’t happening.

Resources Mentioned

Blind to Disruption: The CEOs Who Missed the Future by Steve Blank

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