Where do Disruptive Innovations come from?

by sbennett on August 29, 2011
in Innovation

Gregory Berns in his book “Iconoclast” used a term called “repetition suppression” to describe the phenomenon of decreasing rigor in neurological responses when the brain is repeatedly presented with the same stimuli.

In other words, a disruptive innovation could be defined as something which is produced that was not obvious to a vast majority of people, especially those with experience in the specific domain. We claim that this makes it extremely difficult for disruptive innovations to come from within their own industries.

So what causes that repetition suppression to disappear?

• personal new knowledge and new experience
• diverse networks that are meaningfully engaged

Gregory Berns, in his book “Iconoclast” provides insight into how to avoid repetition suppression. His advice is to find ways to break out of ‘experience-dependent categorization’. Bombard the brain with new experiences. As Gregory Berns stated “...breakthroughs come from a perceptual system that is confronted with something that it doesn’t know how to interpret.” (p.33)

But this requires the individual to sit with a great deal of discomfort. Our bodies and minds fight the imbalance caused by being confronted with something we don’t know how to interpret. We are compelled to provide interpretations and begin to categorizing experiences into the familiar. Nassim Taleb in his book “Black Swan” described a situation where psychologists asked women to select from among twelve pairs of nylon stockings the ones they preferred. The women were then asked for the reasons for their choices, which varied from ‘texture’ to ‘feel’ and color. All of the pairs of stockings were, in fact, identical.

So we claim that an incredible force to fight repetition suppression, is a powerful network of people who are diverse enough in their experiences, approaches, thought patterns, to cause positive disruption in thinking and bring new ideas, approaches, thoughts from different disciplines to the innovation-commercialization process. While this requires that they have the ability to effectively communicate their thoughts and ideas, it also means that they need to be iconoclastic enough to avoid fear responses and bring their thinking to the innovation process.

What causes repetition suppression to disappear? An effective but diverse network… the kind that won’t be afraid to ask ‘dumb’ questions and question traditional approaches and thinking.

References:
1. Christensen, Clayton. The Innovator’s Dilemma (Harvard Business School Press)
2. Talem, Nassim Nicholas. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.

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