Beauty beyond disruption

If there is one common goal that I wish all of us focus on right now for the sake of humanity is to pursue beauty beyond disruption.

Originally, the concept of disruptive strategy was popularised by one the greatest modern strategy thinkers, Clayton Christensen in his masterpiece 'The Innovator’s Dilemma'. His work focused on the areas of serving underserved markets.

However, for the past thirty years, instead of critically refining the disruptive strategy theory, top educational and business schools, global consultancy firms and the Silicon Valley have idolised the terms disruption, disruption strategy and even disruptive innovation as the most effective way to achieve exponential economic success and beat the competition. I believe that disruption is NOT the only way to achieve innovation, and that we need to take a closer look at how to work towards progress that does not negatively impact how we make a living, where we work, or what we do.

Beyond disrupting jobs

According to research published by McKinsey consultancy firm in 2020, as high as 40 per cent of jobs in the Arab world could be disrupted or displaced by technology advancement within a few years. So far, we have not invested in a universal initiative to upgrade our digital skills to mitigate this job disruption. Therefore, we need to rethink jobs and come up with more flexible ways of revenue generation that respects the value shared by any human being, whether digital or not.

Beyond disrupting companies

Who remembers Kodak? Or Nokia? RIM’s Blackberry? These are companies that served us well for a while until they were toppled in their fiercely competitive digitized industry. The question here is: While change is the only constant, is displacing companies the only way to innovate? For every global rapidly expanding company there are disrupted companies. These disrupted companies carry a loss in national balance sheets and local supply chains. Here, supply chain integration to serve stakeholders better could be a better way for growth and impact.

Beyond disrupting industries

First, huge malls and shopping centers displaced neighborhood grocery stores, then Amazon came and disrupted malls and the retail industry. When an industry struggles a whole community struggles as well and the solution is not revisionist protectionism but in forward-thinking rediscovery of just and sustainable procurement and supply chain. One of the clearest examples of the ugly face of disruption is how the weapons industry is displacing the impact investing world. The US and a few of its allies created in the past the most attractive societies that promoted innovation.

Yet today, they are leading the charge in funding and investing in genocidal mania and white supremacy campaigns, powered by intelligent systems that are murdering innocent people, leveling neighborhoods, and starving tens of thousands of people to death. While this extreme disruption is now targeting Palestinians it will not end with them.

Authenticity is beautiful and what is even more beautiful is rediscovering the beauty of our ways of life. We have only one planet, so far, and while we are facing conflicts and climate change we have a duty to leave a more beautiful world to present and future generations through striking a balance between achieving growth without displacing and disrupting beautiful ways of life.