How to Develop a Disruptive Mindset | Innovation Speaker Corrine Sandler
Corrine Sandler is a visionary in the field of market research. A data-driven entrepreneur, Corrine is the founder and CEO of a leading global Market Research agency. As a disruption speaker, Corrine shares actionable strategies to help organizations anticipate the unstated or future needs of their customers. Intertwined with personal life challenges on how Corrine disrupted her life, she explores new ways of thinking about business models & disruptive behaviour.
In this guest blog, she shares 4 ways you can get your disruptive mindset ready.
When I search “disruption” in the book category on Amazon I get 1-12 pages of over 1000 titles; then I tried a google search “disruption in business” 197,000,000 results in 0.41 seconds…
There is a lot of noise out there, but unless you have experienced true disruption – in life or business – all you can do is speculate. Three companies into my career, I still search for a definition of disruptive innovation that I can grasp and act upon. I’ve been mentoring over 70 start-ups globally – searching for the answer and gaining staggering truths into this phenomenon which we as leaders or business owners often dream of achieving.
The exciting news is that in every industry the barriers to entry are quickly eroding. I can tell you the next disruption in your field will come from where you least expect it – especially if it is not coming from you. Periods of disruptive change are not only caused by emerging technologies, but shifting customer demands. These shifts represent a great deal of opportunity, but only for those who don’t fear uncertainty. No matter how stable, wealthy or experienced you are, if you lack courage, you will never find that unicorn. Any great idea is useless without action. The secret to getting ahead is getting started; nothing happens until something moves.
My keynote “Disrupt Or Die” will give you the courage, or should I say the insight to take the first step. I’m not the lion from the Wizard of Oz, but there are some synergies in what Dorothy’s friends were looking for: Three things: a brain, a heart, and courage – all it takes to start being disruptive. My fascination with the notion of disrupting consumer habits began as an experiment on myself when I made a choice to transform my life habits – my thinking, my health, my spirituality – through a rigorous effort to quit doing what was bad for me, and to implement daily practices that made me feel better.
4 Ways To Develop A Disruptive Mindset:
• We cannot all be the Apples of the world and invent products with kick-ass UI that no one dreamt of until they arrived, or the Ford Model X, but what we can do is think about disruptive business models. Apple, Amazon, and Google have set themselves up for a long run of success because they’ve built disruption into their business models, not just their latest products.
• There is no such thing as loyalty anymore. Let’s throwback to June 2008 when Blackberry was $122 per share. Who would have thought that “Canada’s finest” would bottom out? What happened was simple. Blackberry focused on their product and not disrupting consumer and customer behaviour. This Can-tech sweetheart failed to focus on building distinct user habits and routines into their offerings – called behavioural plasticity (the holy grail for survival today) and suffered great loss as a result.
• Fall in love with problems, not solutions. Create an environment that rewards the process and the journey more than the short-term results. Encourage mistakes and risks and big ideas. Fail quickly, pivot, iterate.
• Disrupt Yourself. The most telling and devastating result of complacency in the world of branding is when you are disrupted from the outside in – when others see the way the world is changing and challenge the assumptions of what’s possible before you do. You cannot allow this to happen. You constantly have to assume someone else is out there working on a way to disrupt your products. In my book called “Wake Up or Die” I explain how to use intelligence in business today by applying ancient military tactics in a modern business economy.
You can define disruption any way you want – that’s what’s so remarkable about the term. I personally like the Sid Vicious quote, “Undermine their pompous authority, reject their moral standards, make anarchy and disorder your trademarks. Cause as much chaos and disruption as possible but don’t let them take you ALIVE.”
You are going to be disrupted one way or another – those who continue to succeed have figured out how to do it to themselves first.
Looking for an innovation speaker to help shift your organization towards a disruptive mindset? Corrine Sandler will make the case for do-or-die, intelligence-based disruption at your next event.
