Why We Can't Innovate

Where do disruptive business models come from?  Zipcar and CityCarShare have utterly disrupted the traditional car rental industry in the past few years.  As David Weir of BNet puts it, "rental car companies could have innovated car-sharing.  But they didn't."  And that is the point.  Most people employed within well-established industries do not have the imagination, nor the incentive, necessary to invent disruptive business models.  Thus, these come from outsiders.
Think about how the media industry as a whole has reacted to it multiple threats.  Craigslist, which has improved the classified advertising model - blamed for killing newspapers.  Google, which has improved the user's ability to find news - blamed for killing newspapers.  The Internet generally, which has vastly expanded people's access to news and information about everything imaginable - blamed for killing print media.
And now we come to Twitter, and the social media revolution that is transforming everything we've come to understand about networked, interactive media - dismissed as a fad.
The pattern here is defensive. There has been an almost total collective failure by mainstream media companies to recognize the threat, and therefore the potential, of disruptive technologies.  Three media executives gave their impressions:

"I'd suggest there is a long history of industries that have been disrupted by new technology and could have responded to the challenge earlier but did not.  There is I believe a simple reason why it's nearly impossible to disrupt yourself. It's akin to eating your own young."
     - Richard Gingras, CEO, Salon.com

"It's one thing for a big company (or an entire industry) to die out for lack of vision and innovation. What's worse is when the company or industry works to actively impede change/progress.  [See Music Industry and Internet].
     - Nick DiGiacomo, Co-Founder, Vanno

"You can see how the ways of success of one business model are held onto sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously in organizations that have been market leaders. Unless their leaders are ready to accept the possible complete destruction of the status quo, real innovation isn't possible."
     - Thomas White, Host, Business Matters


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Brian Swann
VCU Brandcenter / Creative Brand Management / 804-690-7048
www.brandcenter.vcu.edu / swannbr@gmail.com