THE DARK SIDE OF INNOVATION I [PODCAST S1E7]

This episode of the podcast summaries my book The Dark Side of Innovation. Over two episodes (this and the next one), it will familiarize you with the dark side of innovation and why it is one of the most challenging forces.

Innovation in Its Dark Form

Although innovation is the holy grail of business, sometimes it incarnates itself in the dark form. In this form, it becomes a curse on the incumbents. Whether they embrace such innovation or avoid them, they end up as a loser. In front of the dark side of innovation, firms become helpless; their strategies become ineffective, and their managers become their worst enemies.

What is the dark side of innovation?

When a change threatens to destroy your profits instead of helping you enhance profits, I call it a profit destroying changes. These changes create cognitive illusions for a firm and managers facing them. Since the truth often evades managers, it remains hidden from view. It remains on the dark side of cognition. This is the second reason why I termed these innovations collectively as The Dark Side of Innovation.

Disruption and Dark Side of Innovation

Due to cognitive challenges such innovations create, they make firms choose the wrong path. This wrong path lulls firms initially and then leave them vulnerable to disruption. The book takes you through dozens of such stories. The cognitive challenges posed by profit destroying innovations link Nobel Prize winning

Key Takeaways

This episode describes three stories of the dark side of innovation. It also explains why the dark side of innovation is so challenging. In this episode you will take away the following:

1. What is the dark side of innovation?
2. What is the challenge of the dark side of innovation?
3. Why does dark side of innovation results in disruption?
4. What is a profit destroying innovation?
5. Why Kodak, Polaroid, Fidelity, Microsoft, Swiss watchmakers behaved the same when faced with profit destroying innovations?

How to listen?

Go to the The Disruption Management audio course to listen to the entire series of audio lessons on Disruption.