This is my guest appearance on The Disruptive Voice Podcast. Exploring the theories of disruptive innovation across a broad set of industries and circumstances with academics, researchers, and practitioners who have been inspired and taught by Professor Clayton M. Christensen. In his book, Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention for Individuals, Organizations, and Life, Aidan McCullen writes about how, centuries ago, sailors would set out to sea with maps labelled with the Latin words hic sun dracones - here be dragons - which meant that they didn't know much - if anything - about the uncharted waters and unexplored lands that awaited them. In today's volatile and uncertain world, there are parallels to be drawn between the odysseys of past and present. There are also strategies that can be employed, both by corporations and by individuals, to thrive amidst challenging circumstances, and they center on the intentional development of a mindset of permanent reinvention. Aidan himself exemplifies this mindset, having built capabilities as a professional rugby player, a digital media specialist, an innovation and change consultant, a professor at Trinity College Dublin, and host of The Innovation Show podcast, where he's in the midst of a three month series dedicated to the life, work, and theories of Clayton Christensen. In this Disruptive Voice episode, he joins Katie Zandbergen to discuss the experience of putting the series together, including not only re-reading all of Clay's books but also having in-depth conversations with his co-authors; the necessity of building capabilities before we need them; lessons we can learn from immortal jellyfish; insights gleaned from making the time to read eclectically; finding assets in ashes; and, above all, the importance of facing the dragons in our lives and of always becoming - the concept of permanent reinvention.

Today’s book offers over eighty assignments, countless ideas, and memorable stories collected throughout The Stanford d.school’s decade-plus history. Today’s guest painstakingly curated this collection from some of the world's most inventive minds, including d.school and IDEO founder David Kelley amongst others. She is with us today to share some of those assignments to spark our creativity because a common characteristic of our audience is - without a doubt - curiosity. It is a pleasure to welcome the Executive Director of the Stanford d.school and the author of Creative Acts for Curious People: How to Think, Create, and Lead in Unconventional Ways, Sarah Stein Greenberg. Find Sarah here: http://www.sarahsteingreenberg.com Find d School here: https://dschool.stanford.edu/books  

In Chapter 5 of Tushman and O’Reilly’s "Lead and Disrupt", the authors share how Cypress Semiconductor used a similar venture funding model, complete with a one-page business plan, for initial funding to grow $40 million in businesses. With their approach called a “Federation of Entrepreneurs”, Cypress is a great case study in ambidextrous leadership. In June 2019, Infineon Technologies announced it would acquire Cypress for $9.4 billion. The deal closed in April 2020, making Infineon one of the world's top 10 semiconductor manufacturers.  We are joined today by that ambidextrous leader, the former CEO of Cypress TJ Rodgers and the author of Lead and Disrupt, Charles O’Reilly III.

In Chapter 5 of the Corporate Explorer, Binns, Tushman, and O’Reilly share how a Corporate Explorer created a new business inside the consulting and accounting firm Deloitte. His new unit, Deloitte Pixel, uses the “wisdom of crowds” to solve complex management problems. His first experience of the power of crowds came when he was part of a self-organised community that came together to provide relief for victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. This taught him that communities of people could self-organise and do work that traditional organisation structures might struggle to perform. He then started to apply similar principles of crowds to management consulting.  It is a pleasure to welcome that very Corporate Explorer, joined by his friend Andrew Binns.

There is no formula for immunity to disruption. Invincibility is an illusion. However, one factor explains why some succeed at corporate venture building. Our experience working with midsize and large legacy firms has shown us that innovation is as much about leadership as it is about the method, strategy, organization, and culture. Leaders who ignite and sustain an exploration spirit are more likely to succeed than those who rely on past strengths or success formulas to carry them through. Corporate Explorers are at the centre of every story of corporate innovations whose intense curiosity makes them dare to go where others do not. These are leaders capable of closing the gap between knowing what needs to be done to grow new businesses and doing so. Today’s book is 20 years in the making. It started when our guest attended an IBM Strategic Leadership Forum at Harvard Business School led by our previous guests in this series, Michael Tushman and Charles O'Reilly III. Our guest had just joined IBM from McKinsey and was assigned as an internal consultant supporting these budding businesses. We are about to hear that story and so much more. It is a pleasure to welcome the author of “The Corporate Explorer: How Corporations Beat Startups at the Innovation Game”, Andrew Binns.

Why do successful firms find it so difficult to adapt in the face of change – to innovate? In the past ten years, the importance of this question has increased as more industries and firms confront disruptive change. The pandemic has accelerated this crisis, collapsing the structures of industries from airlines and medicine to online retail and commercial real estate. Today, business leaders are obligated to investors, their employees, and communities. At the core of this challenge is helping their organizations to survive in the face of change. The original edition summarized the lessons the authors had learned as researchers and consultants over the previous two decades. Since then, they have continued to work with leaders of organizations worldwide confronting disruptive change. With updates to every chapter, including new examples and analysis, this fully revised edition incorporates the lessons and insights the authors have gained in the past five years. Two new chapters critically examine the role of organizational culture in promoting or hindering ambidexterity and its underlying fundamental disciplines. Using examples from firms such as Microsoft, General Motors, and Amazon, O'Reilly and Tushman illustrate how leaders can align their organization's cultures to fit the needed strategy and how ideation, incubation, and scaling approaches, when used all together, can successfully develop new growth businesses.

In part 2 of our Tushman and O'Reilly series, Charles O'Reilly III explores the importance of cultural alignment in encouraging change. We focus on the cases of DaVita, Microsoft and AGC. 00:01:17 Origin Story 00:05:20 Ideate, Incubate, Scale 00:07:37 Culture 00:10:50 The Tyranny of Success: Gunfire At Sea  00:24:20 The L.E.A.S.H. Model 00:21:45 Organisational Culture Change: How Microsoft Transformed Its Culture  00:26:58 DaVita: A Community First, A Company Second 00:31:51 The Importance of Language For Culture Change 00:36:12 AGC INC. IN 2019: “Your Dreams, Our Challenge.”  00:42:48 Waiting Until It Is Too Late to Change

In part 1 of our Tushman and O'Reilly series, Michael Tushman examines how leadership, culture, and organizational architectures can be both critical facilitators of innovation and, not uncommonly, formidable obstacles. They demonstrate how to clarify today's critical managerial problems, use culture and commitment to promote innovation and implement strategy, and deal with changing innovation requirements as organizations evolve.

Our guest is an American scholar, educator, and religious leader who has been a general authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since April 2015 and was the church's seventeenth Commissioner of Church Education from 2015 to 2019. He served previously as the 15th president of Brigham Young University–Idaho from 2005 to 2015 and as the Harvard Business School (HBS) dean from 1995 to 2005. He was also the George F. Baker Professor of Business Administration. He published an important series of studies on technological innovation with various co-authors. The organisational linkages, or integration, required to accomplish innovation is a thread that runs through these studies. These insights culminated in his book with Carliss Baldwin, “Design Rules: The Power of Modularity,” which explores the rules for integrating components that shaped innovation in the computer industry and many others. He studied economics with Clay Christensen in the Fall of 1970 and became his dissertation advisor years later alongside Joe Bower. Kim Bryce Clark is with us to celebrate the life and theories of his friend Clayton Christensen and, indeed, share some of his theories.

Global poverty is one of the world’s most vexing problems. For decades, we’ve assumed smart, well-intentioned people will eventually be able to change the economic trajectory of poor countries. From education to healthcare, and infrastructure to eradicating corruption, too many solutions rely on trial and error. Today’s guest reveals a paradox at the heart of our approach to solving poverty. While noble, our current solutions are not producing consistent results and in some cases, have exacerbated the problem. At least twenty countries that have received billions of dollars worth of aid are poorer now. The right kind of innovation not only builds companies—but also builds countries. The Prosperity Paradox identifies the limits of common economic development models, which tend to be top-down efforts. It offers a new framework for economic growth based on entrepreneurship and market-creating innovation.  It’s a pleasure to welcome the co-author of The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty, Efosa Ojomo. Find Efosa here: http://efosaojomo.com/