What led this innovative company to shut its doors after such phenomenal growth?
The
initial success of SDC’s huge customer pull away from dentist
professionals seems to have boomeranged. Threatened by the SDC’s
disruptive move, dentists allied with regulators and rallied against
SDC. They challenged SDC’s quality and safety of care, sparking
lawsuits, regulatory investigations, and with that, negative attention
in the media. The high cost and time of legal disputes coupled with a
massive advertising expense to mitigate reputation damage and attract
new customers, resulted in mounting debt. Four years after going public
in September 2019, SDC’s swelling debt ultimately led to its downfall.
Disruption
is often intuitively appealing to managers and entrepreneurs, as the
industry to be disrupted provides a clear target of a known market size
and deals with a known need for which people have demonstrated a
willingness to pay. However, as SDC shows, targeting the core of an
existing industry with disruptive solutions often invites strong
resistance and direct confrontation from well-entrenched incumbents and
other vested interests. Companies that want to disrupt should be
prepared for this, both mentally and strategically.
Managers
should recognize that when it comes to innovation and growth,
disruption is not the only path. Creation without disruption or nondisruptive creation is about creating a new market outside or beyond existing industry boundaries, and has its own organizational and business advantages. Let’s run through them.
Nondisruptive creation allows you to avoid direct confrontation with established incumbents.
As
in the case of SDC, stories of disruption are not always about David
taking down Goliath. When facing strong counterattacks from established
organizations with a deep network, financial and marketing resources,
disruptors may sometimes feel like Don Quixote fighting windmills.
Bear
in mind that, at the outset, there is an alternative way to innovate
and grow without disruption. Consider Sesame Street. With its colorful
Muppets like Elmo and Big Bird, catchy tunes, and fun lessons, the TV
program teaches preschool children how to count, name colors and shapes,
and recognize the letters of the alphabet. It also teaches them skills
like how to listen, focus, and be nice to others in a way so fun that
children don’t realize it’s educational.
Despite
its great popularity, “Sesame Street,” did not displace preschools or
libraries. Instead, it unlocked the nondisruptive new market of
preschool edutainment — education infused with entertainment — that had
largely not existed before. Sesame Street’s nondisruptive creation
allowed it to grow fast and unhindered, becoming a global phenomenon
that reaches millions of children in over 150 countries, and spawning
the multimillion-dollar industry of preschool edutainment.
It is an effective way to respond to full-on disruption.
Companies
are often locked into the thinking that disruption can only be
countered with disruption. But direct retaliation is only one way to
deal with disruption, and not always a viable one nor the best way.
Consider
the experience of the British company Cunard, a leader in the
transatlantic ocean liner industry. When commercial airflights disrupted
the industry in the 1950s, Cunard saw no way its ocean liner could
match or beat the speed and convenience offered by transatlantic jet air
travel. What to do? The company’s first instinct was to match this
disruption with its own disruptive move before the entire ocean liner
industry was displaced. It entered the airline industry by acquiring
Eagle Airways and rebranding it as Cunard Eagle. However, the airlines
retaliated. Soon, its main competitor, British Overseas Airways
Corporation (BOAC), used its industry clout to have Cunard Eagle’s
license revoked.
Was
Cunard destined for demise as the disrupted? On the contrary, Cunard
pivoted and made a nondisruptive move by innovating “luxury vacationing
at sea,” ushering in the modern cruise industry. In this brand-new
industry, ocean liners would no longer be viewed and used as a means to
an end. Instead, the voyage would be the end itself. People would take
cruises more for pleasure and star-studded entertainment than to be
transported from point A to B. Cunard’s move went beyond the boundaries
of any existing industries of the time. Cunard’s nondisruptive creation
allowed it to escape the disruptive force of airlines that destroyed
other ocean liners. The company today is part of Carnival Corporation,
and the cruise tourism industry it pioneered some 60 years ago generates
revenues of about $30 billion annually and has created more than a
million jobs.
It makes it easier to secure support from internal stakeholders.
When
established companies want to innovate in their existing industry space
and that innovation is bound to disrupt and displace their own current
business and the revenues that go with it, they often face high
execution hurdles with their internal stakeholders — employees,
directors, executives, managers, and investors.
Consider
the classic case of Kodak, which invented the world’s first digital
camera. While Kodak understood the disruptive threat digital photography
posed, it couldn’t get behind making this move as it would cannibalize
the company’s existing profitable film and printing business and with
that, potentially all employees’ livelihoods that depended on them.
Internal resistance and disagreement about introducing the digital
camera led to management indecision and reluctance to act on its
innovation until it was too late.
Unlike
a disruptive move, nondisruptive creation offers established companies a
viable and less threatening path to growth and market innovation.
Consider the nondisruptive creation of Viagra. Initially developed by
Pfizer as a treatment for high-blood pressure, the blue pill didn’t
consistently work for its original purpose in development trials.
However, it revealed a confirmed “side effect” that addressed impotence
in men. Since the marketplace lacked widely accepted treatments for ED,
Viagra promised huge pent-up demand. More than that, it wouldn’t
displace any of the company’s existing drugs. Instead, it would create a
new growth engine for the company if successful. The result: Pfizer’s
internal stakeholders felt energized rather than fearful and fully
embraced moving forward to create the new market. Shortly after its
launch, Viagra became a global phenomenon, ranking among the highest
grossing prescription drugs in Pfizer’s portfolio and generating more
than $30 billion in sales for the company.
As
the success of Viagra shows, there is significant money, opportunity,
and impact to be realized with this nondisruptive, less threatening
approach to innovation and growth. It allows established companies to
navigate organizational politics more effectively, alleviate employee
anxieties, and can often more easily secure strong buy-in.
It largely avoids backlash from external stakeholders.
External
stakeholders are the people or groups outside the organization that are
nonetheless affected by an organization’s market-innovation move,
including society, government, nonprofit associations, and even the
media. By displacing existing players and often circumventing industry
rules and regulations, disruption is often more apt to attract
opposition from social interest groups, government agencies, and
nonprofit associations. This resistance may lead to lobbying efforts to
restrict, regulate, or tax the disruptor.
That
was certainly the case for Airbnb as hotel associations lobbied against
it as it was poised to not only disrupt the industry, but skirted taxes
required of hotels. More than that, as cities saw residential rental
properties taken off the market and instead repurposed for short-term
Airbnb stays, its disruptive move also posed a housing challenge for
many city governments as the housing supply shrank. The result: cities
like New York stepped in and placed growing restrictions on Airbnb’s
short-term rental properties.
In
contrast, nondisruptive creation, largely avoids triggering negative
backlash from external stakeholders. As it solves brand-new problems or
creates brand-new opportunities outside existing industry boundaries, no
social carnage is unlocked. Whether it be Sesame Street, Viagra,
microfinance or life coaching: none of these nondisruptive moves
prompted external stakeholders to initiate intense legal attacks,
counter-lobby to curtail or restrict the innovation, or push back in
apprehension of job losses in their community.
By
highlighting the advantages of nondisruptive creation, our aim here is
not to claim that it is superior to disruption. In reality, disruption
and nondisruptive creation are complementary. Depending on specific
market conditions, companies may find it workable and beneficial to
pursue disruption, nondisruptive creation, or a combination of the two.
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