Renée Mauborgne - Co-Director of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute | The Blue Ocean Strategy

Today, my guest is Renee Mulborn, a prominent figure in the world of business and strategy. She is an NCAD Distinguished Fellow and a Professor of Strategy at NCAD, one of the world's leading business schools. She is also the co-director of the NCAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute, a center dedicated to exploring and promoting innovative strategies that create uncontested market spaces. Her collaboration with W. Chan Kim has resulted in numerous best-selling articles and publications like The Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, and The Financial Times. Their most notable work, The Blue Ocean Strategy, published in 2005, has become an international sensation, selling over two million copies and being translated into 42 languages. Her influence and expertise have earned her accolades, including being recognized as one of the world's top management gurus and winning prestigious awards for contributions to the fields of international business and strategic thinking. Welcome to Success Story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The Success Story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. For everyone listening, I just have to ask you a question. Do you want to know what separates the contenders from the pretenders, the A list from the C list, world champions from the world, not champions? It's pretty simple. The fourth quarter in sports, more importantly for a lot of the people listening here in business, finishing strong is key. Now HubSpots, New Sales Hub is the software that you need for your sales and your sales team to win Q4. You could be a solo printer, you could own and run a larger business, regardless if you're selling anything to anyone, which I think a lot of the people who are listening to this are, you need to check out Sales Hub. So there is a new prospecting workspace, there's revamped deal management tools, there's smart sequencing, Sales Hub is loaded with everything you need to turn leads into prospects and then convert those prospects into customers. With Sales Hub, you have the right information at the right time to build better relationships, which means closing deals has never been easier. So this Q4 give yourself and your team the tools to win big with HubSpot Sales Hub. Learn more at HubSpot.com slash sales. So I remember my father when I was very little talking and he just looked at me and he said, Renee, no matter what, but never, but never, but never give up. Even when you face struggles or difficulties, you keep on going. And I think that has really made me never want to give up because in any journey in life, there are difficulties, there are challenges. And when I face them, yes, you take a punch, you might shed a tear, but I was remember, but never give up. There's always a way forward. Start looking for that now. That would be it. Why was that such an important lesson for him? I think he was in the Marines and that was drilled down into him in the Marines. The Marines, you never give up. That's it. You marched forward. I love that. And like growing up, so let's talk about, you know, your early career and what because a lot of the work that you do has focused on researching things that no one has, it's almost like a contrarian view on a topic. So the way that you first researched the blue ocean, I find it to be very contrarian, even now it's very normalized. And even what you're working with now, how we relook and reinterpret disruption, again, a very contrarian view on what disruption is and what it isn't. So how does one's career allow them to, without sounding too cliche, go into a blue ocean in terms of a thought that has never existed before. Research that thought, think through the implications on an industry and then properly formulate something that resonates so deeply with somebody where before your research, there wasn't a concept like that. So you know, I don't think I have, or we have a really neat, tidy answer for you on that. But you know, like when we were in Michigan in the 1980s, myself and my colleague, Chan Kim, everyone in business school was teaching about how to compete. And that was the time in America where, you know, for the first time in our history, industry after industry was getting devastated by a new set of global challenges. And at the time, it was the Japanese. It was Earth moving, equipment was devastated, consumer electronics, electronics, tech styles. And in being in Michigan and in Arbor, we saw the auto-capital America absolutely devastated. I mean, just right was a, was a ghost town when we went in there. And so we thought, you know, what's the cause of all these problems? And it was too much competition. And yet that was exactly what we were teaching was how to compete. So we said, is that the best way? And if you read the journals at the time, everyone was talking about how we need to learn to compete in order to survive. And we were young and we thought, we don't want to survive. We want to thrive. And are there other organizations that in spite of the competition are finding an alternative path to grow, to create new opportunities and to thrive. And we started to search them out. And we found out, yeah, there were. And they were not stuck in what we call these existing industries, which were labeled the red oceans at the time because there were bloody red with a lot of competition, more competition, more supply than demand. And so it was tough. And we saw people being led out of work. That was when the rust belt of America was being built. And then we saw all the other companies creating that we call those blue oceans because you could unlock them. So I guess if I think about, you know, we just became observers of life. And instead of only listening to what the media told us, we have to compete. This is the way. We looked at what are the implications and what do we see? And we asked ourselves, oh, is was there another way? We don't want to start with what is, but what should be? And then how do we construct that? And I think Scott, to our second book, it's a very similar mindset. And that is that, you know, when blue ocean took off, of course, and it did what it did. And thank you for acknowledging that. You know, people said, well, if you're creating, you said there's competing and creating. It's counterintuitive, but it is also complementary. One does not just place the other. You need both in life. Like, you have to know how to compete. You have to know how to create. Every company does. But at the same time, you know, we started looking at people in innovation space and said, well, is it blue ocean is creating? So is it innovating? And we looked at our data and we said, no, it's not. Disruption is when you create an industry that completely displaces and takes down another. So Netflix comes along and blockbuster and any video rental store finished. Yeah. On the other hand, blue ocean is about looking across industry. So Cirque du Soleil, I take a little a circus, I take a little a theater, I have a disruption at the margin, but I never displaced an industry, create new growth. But we started looking. We said, wow, isn't that interesting? As our database had grown because we're perpetual researchers every day, you know, we saw all these examples of companies that were actually creating outside of existing industries where they had no displacement at all. And so we thought that is interesting. So I can create, not touch even the margins of an industry and create economic and social good. What is that? Why does the field of innovation assume we need to disrupt and every venture capitalist will tell you every startup comes to them. We've plans to take on an existing industry when there's all this opportunity space where I can also make impact and billion dollar businesses where I can pursue what we call non-destructive creation when you create without destroying. And so we said, no, that is really interesting. No one's talking about it and we want to start exploring it. So I think in both cases, it's about, you know, we talk about your agency versus structure in the book. And we say many people lead with structure, meaning we accept the world as it is. And we build from that what should be. And really, it's about using the power of your own thinking to observe the world and see what it is and determine does what you're hearing make sense and what could do better. So I love the view. I love the lens I wish you look to the world. And I think the world would candidly across every school of thought, every argument, every debate would be a better place if everybody approached them with that mindset. I absolutely love that. So that would be my beginning thought, you know, on how we kind of think as researchers and how we observe. Why do you think that you just mentioned a very good point that I have an opinion and I'm curious as to whether or not you think this opinion is valid, valid, excuse me. Why do you think that venture capitalists always say we have to disrupt? It's because, and in my opinion, it's because the playbook is there and it's it's de-risked to some degree. It's still risk. But it's so I would say that if you're looking at the levels of risk, we have building a product in, say, a red ocean and doing it slightly better, cheaper, that's like the most de-risked opportunity. Then disruption is at least there's a playbook for disruption because we can look to other people that have done it. But no one's codified the playbook for disruption without displacement. Yeah, and so we would actually say it's not a sky destruction. We, you know, we call it non-destructive opportunities and we call it non-destructive creation because you create without destroying. So we would no flip that lens. So we put a new, just a blue ocean, put a new lens to look at the world and see things. When we start thinking non-destructive, it just changes where our orientation is and what comes to the foreground of our observation and thought. But to go back to that, I mean, it's got, so your question is, why do we default to this? Why do we default to the we have to disrupt? Thank you so much. So I think there's, you know, a few issues there. One is I think it's really start up to go to venture capitalists with destructive ideas because they've seen unicorns that have succeeded based on that in the theory of innovation for what we learn in the top MBA schools. It starts out with creative destruction from this gentleman or economist called Shimpeter. Then there was disruption. We saw disruption with the internet and it became a whole way of looking at the world. So that frames us just the way competing framed everyone before blue ocean came out. We got pushed back in the beginning and now it's completely accepted. So I think that's one thing, but I think also when I agree to your point, it looks like, well, when I disrupt, I know there's an established industry and I can take it on. But in some ways, I would argue, you know, the venture capital odds of being successful are not that high when they bet on, you know, many of their investments fail. And think about that because when you set out to disrupt an existing industry, that existing industry is not going to just sit there and say, welcome to my industry, please take the bone of Bologna off my bread and enjoy the results. They are going to sit there and fight you, right? So it's very interesting. Yes, at the start point, we know the existing industry, that looks easier. But then I'm saying, but I'm going to take on all the biggest bullies and the biggest strength there is and watch me knock it down as a startup. That's a lot of bravado actually in that. And no doubt some succeed, but not nearly to the extent that we would think that they do. And I would condition that to say that, you know, if to give, you know, a tip to your reviewers who are probably thinking some of them thinking about creating a business, if I see an industry that's really asleep at the wheel, players in that industry really have an innovating the long time, they seem to have poor service, cost structures are high, that might be an industry. I'm going to think that there's some disruptive opportunity, because obviously they're leaving a lot of good things on the table for someone to take. But if I'm looking at an industry that's got, you know, top players in it that have deep pockets, deep resources, people really love them. They're getting good ratings. Am I going to sit out to disrupt that industry? Well, let me tell you, you can't just be a magnitude of 10% better to displace that industry. You've got to be 50, 60, 70 percent better. And there's another factor we don't take into account. Forget in disruption, which no one talks about. All the big guys and big players are going to go out that are out to smack you down. Understandably, as you would smack someone down, but there's another thing, there's sunk costs involved for buyers. So, you know, solar roofs have been trying desperately to displace traditional roofs on houses for the longest time. And think about it, they promise you to almost reduce your electricity or energy cost is your big plus, right? They allow you to know you're contributing to the environment, big plus. And in truth, there's some emotional status. Yeah, one of those people that care, I take action. Yet, the penetration is very small and why? Because the investment in a roof is 20,000, depending on where you are, 20 to 30,000 to read your roof, depending on the size of your home. It lasts for 20 years. And so once somebody has done that, there's huge sunk costs to change. So, there's also the buyer sunk costs. And for me to move from what is to what could be your new disruptive offering, your magnitude of difference has to be fundamental for me to shift. And I think that a lot of startups aren't calculating that correctly. So what looks like it's de-risk to your point, because I can see it, is actually when you deeply think through it, a lot more risky than we know. So then you say, well, non-destructive has a different set. We don't have to take on the big players. We don't have to, on the other hand, overcome some costs. But we have a different set of challenges, because we need to be able to establish that demand could be there, that isn't there yet, and the size of that potential market. And so they have different pros and cons to them. But I would say the ease of disruption has been greatly oversold to people. That's practically from a practical standpoint. I think that's actually very fair. And I think that, I think that if I was a founder trying to build something, and I, and I, by the way, I love your mod. I'll tell you why I love your model, because this is the second book and, and person that is thought through this problem. If you actually look behind me, Play Bigger is about Benioff with Salesforce.com and Ikea, very similar mindset. They didn't really disrupt. I mean, they did to a point, but it wasn't displacing. It was creating a category and then selling into that category. And that's, I mean, look, look at these companies now, right? That's why they're killing me. So I think that's, is that, but to, to, to really draw a vivid picture for people, is that the, the type of company that has done it? Well, you said Cirque du Soleil, what a Salesforce.com would? Cirque du Soleil and Salesforce. Those are two companies that are both in what we would call blue ocean. So, so let me say there's three paths to creating new markets. Okay, I want to, I want to be for the understanding example of each type of company. Yeah, that's great. I think so there's three different paths to creating a new market. So one is disruption and that is when I offer a breakthrough solution to existing market. So I set out to displace and replace it. So Netflix comes, they displace and replace blockbuster videos, right? So that's what I am doing there. Apple comes with the iPhone. They displace all the existing mobile phones. Nokia goes out of business. Sony Ericsson out of business, right? So you have Motorola out of business, Blackberry out of business, and they come in that area. That's disruption. Then blue ocean is when I create a new market, not within an existing industry, but across industries. So in the case of Cirque du Soleil, I look across theatre, I look across circus, take a little of both, recombine it in a, in a new way, take a margin of disruption. So not disruptive growth and a margin of disruption. So it's a balance. And now the third path is non-destructive creation. And that's when you create a new market outside of industry boundaries. So actually, there's no displacement at all. So if you look at Jim McKelvie and Jack Dorsey, who created the square reader, you know, Jim McKelvie himself has an article that came out in Harvard Business Group, said great companies don't set out to disrupt. And so what he is looking at is how come micro businesses that need credit cards, most popular form of payment in America, and individuals like a babysitter who wants to get payments or an ice cream, you know, truck that's going around and people don't have cash, but their kid is crying. They want to give them a nice, or they want it for themselves. They can use that credit card. And so they created the square reader by using the mobile phone. And now suddenly they opened up this whole new market, industry outside of credit cards and payment didn't infringe on either. By the way, did not have any NCR payment industry going out to attack it. Everyone just let it go because it didn't try to take my bread or butter at all. And it created all new growth. So I guess the three differences. One is disruption is within an existing industry. Blue ocean is across existing industries and non-destructive creation, which is really the opposite end of the innovation spectrum. And that is creating outside of industries. And no one has been talking about that. And we believe it's important because there's no displacement at all, no shuttered companies, lost jobs, hurt communities, a main street that has every single store empty because Amazon has given us break products, but led to retail being closed everywhere. So the follow up to that is as a founder, say, say I would love to build that. I would love to build a product in that category. But then I run into the issues that I'm talking to a venture capitalist. I'm talking to an angel and they're like, what's the tan? And I'm like, oh, I don't know. Well, I don't know what the tan is. So how does somebody think the total addressable market, what's the market that you're going to sell into when you're trying to raise money from an investor? So how do you think through getting a company in this third lane off the ground? So I think the first thing, we give the three building blocks to do it. The first is you have to identify. There's two ways to identify these non-destructive opportunities. So one is an existing problem we've all taken for granted. So you know, small companies and individuals like a babysitter prior to square reader, we just took for granted that when you're an individual, you can't accept credit card payments as small business. That's kind of what stinks about being a small business. You don't get to enjoy those bets. That's a struggle of a small business until you're a big guy. You don't get to enjoy those benefits. So we just simply accept it until someone says, well, why not? Right? So the square comes out. That's one path. And the other path is an emerging issue or problem in the world due to demographics, environment, social chains, new technology. So like esports, how did that grow? They had all these video games, kids and young people and older people are playing all over the world. And they started to observe in the video game industry how many people, especially in Korea where it's really part of their culture, would not play the video games, but sat and started watching them always online and they had these video game cafes where somebody would be playing and they'd have a crowd around them. And they started to realize, wait a minute, young people don't only want to play the game. So there's a whole group of people that want to watch just the way people love watching tennis, even if they don't play or they love watching football, even if they don't play. And then they started saying, could we not create an opportunity to create esports, live event, 50,000 people and bring it together? Net to your point. How do you start to assess the size of that market? Now the next question becomes, well, who cares? The most important question is, so I need to understand the two paths, but then question, who cares besides me? Who? Am I the only one or not? So in the case of, if I go back to square reader, they said, okay, how many small and mid-sized businesses, what is the size of their transaction volume? They make much smaller transactions, but what is the quantity of them? And then, you know, can we find out how many would find it in annoyance or would be better served if they had credit cards? And then they look for studies that found as well, most people prefer to be able to have the ease of a credit card if they don't have cash. That allowed them to see that on the bottom of the pyramid, well, companies were all focused on the big and large companies on the pyramid, which have huge volumes. They found out that all these little tiny volumes could add up to a lot. So the question becomes that, but you can also, and is very important, is find out how can, so we say, who cares besides you? But then the second thing is, dream big, but start small. So can I then, for esports, start to bring people together and start to have one event and see what kind of response that I'm getting, so that I can have some level of proof for the effectiveness of what I'm doing to establish that. So I guess if I were to go to a VC, I'm going to go to a VC and say, you know, you hear about destruction. I know it sounds good, but let me, but how many of your venture capital projects succeed or fail? They know so many fail. From the significant amount. Significant amount. And number two is, you know, we think destruction is easy, but let's talk about what really destruction means. I'm going against big guys. I'm going against sun cost. There's another path, right? So let me talk a name, and I'm now going to name five, six, seven big players that have pursued this, right? They're in our book, but you can just find them. These are all non-destructive opportunities. Do I take on big players? No, that don't I? Then I'm going to say, what is the problem I'm doing? It should be palpable. Who cares besides me? I'm going to start articulating that. And then what I'd love to have, I say, dream big, but start small is proof of where I have, if possible, and usually is possible, one experiment. So if I go back to even 3M when they came out with Post-it notes, the first thing they did before they could start to scale that, because when 3M starts to really move big, you're talking a lot of money. That means a lot of Siri to system more money than more people way. So they start giving this Post-it note to every single secretary and they find out no matter who they give it to, they call and they want more, right? So they start testing. They then interestingly did a first market research study with it, and they didn't get good results. So it goes back to what I said initially and never give up. And they realized was they explained the product, but they didn't let people try the product. So then they went back and they said, let's do a sampling blitz. Let people put it in their hands and see how it works. And it starts to take off there, right? So I guess my point is that we're looking for, you have to look for proof of how something works or doesn't work in order to be able to show what it is. In the case of Viagra, you know, that drug was initially meant for high blood pressure. And when they talk with the people that were testing the drug, this unfortunately didn't look like high blood pressure, but they noticed it had this side effect, which we understand what it was. And a man were smiling, they didn't want to give these pills back. And they said, wow, I think we're on to something. And so these are the types of social push that when you're saying, so in Viagra, in Viara's case in Pfizer, the case didn't have to meet to VC. It has made an upper management to start having money being it. So then they said, okay, let's put a different study behind it, you know, because whether it's internal or external before people put money down, they really want to start to understand the size of the market. So you want to try to de-risk it, but also as much as possible, minimize the resources I put behind before I have that proof. So, you know, you still have that MVP framework, that minimum viable product framework that transcends all startups, no difference there, and that actually allows you to test. Yes, so you can, that is right, but you can also, minimum viable, you can scope it down. So like microfinance, if we look, that's a, you know, a multi-billion dollar industry helped over 140 million people. Well, when Mohammed Yunus had the idea to start doing that, he saw all the poor people in India, in Bangladesh and all, but what he really did initially was he said, no, if I was ever to talk to people about starting this industry and getting financing for this industry, and I said, I want to tackle poverty, which is widespread in all of the people that are living under today, the banking industry, and my own team will laugh at me. What I'm going to do is scope it down to one town, one village, and I'm going to make these tiny loans, and I'm going to see the pay-back rates. I'm going to see the way it impacts our lives. When I have that, I have something that I can bring of credibility in my team to believe I'm onto something, because you want to convince your team, they need confidence to move forward, but also when I go to bankers and outsiders with what I have. And so, you know, we try to go into how, you know, to answer the two questions. Once you've identified the problem, so it's an existing problem that's overlooked, long taken for granted, like if I go back to microfinance, whoever, this didn't pop problems in pop-up. It's been here since eternity. You ever thought that people, many of whom were other earning less than two dollars a day, many of whom are illiterate, can't read a bank document to begin with. They won't walk into a bank out of fist because they feel intimidated. They have no steady income, if they have income, and on the other hand, they have no collateral, and they've nobody that can co-sign for them. Of course, how could banking be for them? Maybe take for granted, but he said, no, no, no, no. These people have skills. They know how to survive in poverty, and these people have the same aspiration we have. They want to better their lives, and guess what? They don't need tens of thousands of dollars the way people in the wealthy cities do. They need matter a few dollars. And so, he started to look and reframe that thinking there is existing problem had long been taken for granted. And to be truthful with you, Scott, they're everywhere. It's like, when you don't have the lens to think that way, you don't realize how many problems are often right in front of us. We just don't see. We start the book off with the case of music, not impossible, and the death and hearing. We all assume what a tragedy. And I say that from a hearing perspective, so maybe that's wrong perspective to say, but I say most people would commonly say it's unfortunate to be born without hearing. And we just say, forget that as a result of that, you cannot experience music. It's just part of life. But they said, why is that? Because we don't actually hear with our ears. It's just where vibration enters our human existence, our body. We actually hear with our brain. And if you fall on the street and you hurt your head in a certain way, without even touching your ear, you can lose your hearing. So he said, it can we not find another receptive mechanism to allow vibration to enter our brain. So we begin to get the sensational music. And they found it could be your skin. Were these audiologists or doctors? No. These are just this company called music. It's called Not Impossible Labs. Actually, that's the name of the company. It's called music, not impossible. Because I said, how could we bring music? And so they used existing technologies found how through vibration and the skin, they could let that enter our body with different frequencies. And so it's like a vest you wear if you were surfing. And it was it's a beautiful, but we took for granted that problem and they said out to solve it. Is it just one or like in the case of, you know, esports, what are newly emerging aspirations of people, right? Or newly emerging problems? It didn't exist two years ago even. And then how do we create these new opportunities? So it's absolutely fascinating. What when you look at this lens, this is a lens in which you view the world. Now, I hope that people can understand how impactful this is, but speak to me about why this is important for our future. Why is it important for us to look in this way outside of maybe having a slightly easier go at building a company? That's that's fun. That's nice. That's very that's not that important at the end. It's important, but it's not as important as where does this take humanity in the future? So I, you know, I think there are several reasons, which is why we're so passionate about and we've worked a lot of years on this. You know, so one is, of course, that it allows me to achieve, often we think, you know, in business, you're either a corporate reader, I'm being simplistic, you're a corporate reader, you're a tree hugger. You know, you either pursue profiting growth, or you know, you're very committed to helping the world. And non-destructive creation allows us to pursue profit, but achieve social good in the very way we earn money, not spend money. So, you know, traditionally corporate social responsibility in companies is a cost factor. It's how we spend money, not how we make money, but with non-destructive creation, I am able to pursue economic growth without causing social harm to the organizations, which I think speaks very much to what the younger generations really care about, but also it speaks very much to this new movement about how we need to consider not only shareholders, but our broader stakeholders in society. And this is very important. And, you know, recently there's been some pushback where people say, you know, you're pushing too hard for stakeholders, and that's because companies are feeling that they have to truncate their profits too much to do this, and they're hurting themselves in the process. But, you know, non-destructive creation, it's a positive some approach, not zero sum. So, that's at one level, and I do believe it's important. If I'm an executive as a company, do, if I had two alternatives, one is I can disrupt and displace and destroy an industry, which is macho and good and I make money. On the other hand, I can create a billion dollar business where I don't destroy and take down others, and I care about communities that are around and those employees, because when I disrupt, when you're on the opposite end of disruption, someone's really getting hurt. Of course. The whole word source is wiped out, right? Yeah, just walk down Madison Avenue, New York, and you watch every other store, every three or four stores, they're closed, right? And so, it has a tremendous impact on the real estate industry, all the retail employees, but also on our minds, right? It just creates a sense of a lack of hope when you see everything getting closed down, right? You need, you need vibrancy and vibrancy in a neighborhood in the community, inspires us to think, feel with hope, imagination for the future. So, as a CEO, if I have two opportunities before me, I'm not going to disparage disruption, but I'm going to seriously weigh non-destruction because those ideas and those issues matter, but the second issue very much is what we're talking about every day, and this is an emerging challenge, and that is a fourth industrial revolution. So, you know, every day with this chat, GBT that came out, everyone's playing with it, trying it, and you know, every day you'll read articles estimated 100 million people might lose jobs or whatever, it's always in large numbers, often in the hundreds of millions, that we hope that's not the case, and no be countervailing people, which will say, well, in most industrial revolutions, there is displacement, but eventually new jobs, and we hope so, you know, we hope that'll be the case, but we believe we should always prepare for the worst and plan for and hope for the best. We need to be preparing for the worst, hoping for the best, and what does that mean is that when this AI, and if by the way, it's not coming as much for blue collar jobs, smart machines are coming from blue collar jobs, but AI is coming for white collar jobs, they're coming for creative jobs, they're coming for writing jobs, legal jobs, medical jobs, all these industries that have seen themselves as safe. And so, the real question is, you know, people say, well, the result in lower price, better quality products and services, sure, if people have a job and income to buy those, but if 100 million people get crushed and lose their jobs and they have no income, where's the money to buy that? And what's going to be the implication, if we are within the space of a few years, all these people out of work for society, that's not a productive society, it actually creates a lot of social problems when people don't have work. So where are the new jobs going to come from? That's what I ask. And non-destructive creation by creating without destroying, without displacing jobs allows me to create new jobs without taking away further. If I disrupt that, also create growth, but in the short and medium term, by releasing even more labor. So, you know, please, but if you look at even self-driving cars, big disruption, but let me tell you, I think it's the 3% of the American workforce, it's one of the highest occupations in America in many states are drivers of one sort, bus driver, tractor, taxi driver, truck driver. So it comes and disrupts, eventually creates new jobs. But what about in the interim of all those jobs displaced, where are they going to get absorbed to? So, you know, we see that I think it'll be really important at the level of community, at the level of government to start trying to think about and inspiring people to think not only disruption and not only aiming AI at efficiency and productivity, because technology is a means to an end, but can I aim it and start thinking about the value space of non-destructive, so I'm also creating new jobs with it. And that I think is going to be a big challenge and why it's important for the future. And just one thought on that, because even in a non-destructive creation of a new industry, some of the jobs, just to make sure I understand some of the jobs in that new industry will still be displaced, but ultimately at least the entire industry is not displacing jobs in another industry. So there will be, it'll be mitigate some of the effects of emerging AI technology replacing white collar and whatnot. Yeah, so what it'll allow us to do, Scott, is to hopefully create new industries, new markets, new products and services that require new people to come on board and you're right. Some of those jobs that come on board will be able to be used by AI to be efficient, but also creating all these new jobs. But what it's not going to do, though, is start to displace people in existing jobs and existing industries. So it allows us, as human resources and human beings are released from some jobs, it creates new opportunities to absorb new jobs. So that's what we see. Yeah. I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode, HubSpot. Now, as you all know, the success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. There are incredible podcasts in this network. One of my favorites that you have to check out. If you don't know this podcast, you're kind of sleeping on it. The Gold Digger podcast hosted by Jenna Kutcher. This podcast has been around for a minute. Jenna is an OG in the podcast game. The Gold Digger podcast helps you discover your dream career with productivity tips, social strategies, business hacks, inspirational stories, interviews, and so much more. Please go check out the Gold Digger podcast hosted by Jenna Kutcher wherever you get your podcasts. Okay. So a lot of this conversation has spoken about an entrepreneur that's thinking about building something from scratch, but there's also the opportunity for people within organizations to adopt a more non-disruptive mindset. So how do we foster that culture of non-disruption because I don't think that even in a legacy organization, I mean, even getting a legacy organization to disrupt, it is like a hard enough thing to do. So how do we get them over that hump all the way through to, okay, just be forward thinking, be non-disruptive, create in this lens. How does a company do that? Somebody's listening to this, VP, C-suite, and a fortune 1,000. What do they take away? I think the first thing I want to take away is to start a discussion on it, to ask people to think about this idea and whether it makes sense to their organization, the one thing that you find is that when you ask, and this is where the theory of disruption has been, you're asking an established company to disrupt themselves. First of all, if you ask them to disrupt an existing industry, they understand that they're going up against big piers with big resources. They know it's not an easy win, but the alternative is they often say, you know, disrupt your own industry before someone else does, but no one wants to disrupt their own industry. Because the second I tell myself, disrupt myself, what happens to me as an organization? Actually, I fill myself with fear because what I'm saying is make myself irrelevant in a sense. So first thing is that you have to understand within an established organization, disruption is harder to, in many respects, from our perspective, it's harder to absorb because I think it's politically and emotionally difficult for organizations to overcome that. And so there's often a lot of pushback. We have a quote in our book from an oil executive, that saying that when you have three quarters of your organization focused on fossil fuels, and you have these existing new industries that are green energy trying to displace and destroy this, we're not too excited about putting out our livelihoods here. So we find ways to slap overhead on the new businesses and you know, make it difficult. And so people want to jump shit from there. And so let me just say that, but I think very importantly, we say to organizations, you know, we all need to innovate. No one is going to deny that. Innovation, if there's one constant in the future is we need to innovate to stay ahead, especially with global competition and tense. And especially today with people being concerned with the recession on the horizon, or maybe being felt now everyone has different perspectives, but it's difficult right now. No doubt it's difficult. I can be difficult for the next few years, especially if we have de-globalization and cost structures rise because of that. And so the question is people are going to be tight with their money. So it's less you're innovating in the marketplace and doing something special, you can expect your demand to shrink. So we need innovation. Now there's two different types of innovation. I can disrupt in this place, or I can also pursue these non-destructive opportunities where I look for growth and innovation outside of my industry, but it doesn't have to be far outside, right? So when video game makers created esports and jumped on to and created their own teams and and their own adapted to multi-game players, they created a non-destructive industry, but it was right next to their industry. So to simplify Scott, you can have both destruction isn't that easy for a lot of established companies, but we found non-destructive is a bit more because I'm not displacing myself. I'm looking for new opportunities. And the first step is I need to have a discussion. What is this? Does it make sense? Do we need to innovate and should we pursue disruption or maybe some of our unit should because those industries are asleep at the wheel? And maybe there are these industries where we see we really can see existing problems that have been unaddressed that we can or newly emerging ones, we can do some non-destructive. And I'd want to have that discussion. And I think that's the first thing I'd really want to do. And then you know, if I want to take it further, I'd start to ask my team, all right, these are the two paths, you know, an existing problem we've taken for granted that people are really struggling with. I want you to go give me two weeks go think about that one team of my people and another team newly emerging problem or opportunity we could create. And let's come back in three weeks knowing these two and let's brainstorm what ideas we have and how can we start thinking about that. And that would be the way I would start a conversation. So I start to open people's mental space to that. You know, when I was doing research for this, I saw a paper that you would put out for the Harvard Business Review about value innovation. Was this was value innovation the first iteration of this concept that just evolved? So evaluations are a research is a 30 year journey. I realized that 2004 I was I was surprised it wasn't something 2014. It seems like this has been an emerging concept for a while. Well, value innovation was actually became a classic. So it was republished. Innovation was actually first published in 1997. Oh my goodness. Yes. So we have and we had a series of best selling Harvard Business Review articles and then they asked Harvard and a few publishers asked us for about five years to write a book. We said no, we have nothing really simple and important. We believe to say that can make a real difference to business. And then we took five more years and then we eventually came out with our first book, Blue Ocean Strategy. And we got pushed back because competing is everything. And we said, we're not we're not challenging competing. We're just saying there's competing and there's this non-destructive opportunity called creating. Let's look at it. And then, you know, we did that. It grew and then we started to see all this disruption. And we say, why did we why are we always playing a zero-sum game? I mean, do you know where the zero-sum game comes from? I don't actually know. What's I know the I know what it is, but I don't know where the. And business fundamentally comes from war. It comes from military strategy. Interesting. And the key defining a factor of military strategy, there's only so much land. So for me to advance and gain more territory, I have to do it at your expense. Because there's the amount of land that exists on this beautiful earth is limited. So my win must come at your loss. But when we took so that's why we used Chief Executive Officers frontline staff, right? We use all these still military terminology in companies without understanding realizing it. And when military strategy moved into business strategy, innovation, infiltrated all of business, we took with it the key limiting factor, which is that limited land that you have to have zero-sum game. When in business, the only limitation is our imagination. The amount of industries have exploded over time. And so he said, why do we accept that key limiting factor of war in a space that has no such limitation? We can our limitations are imagination. All these industries, if you look at the industry classification systems done by governments, they have exploded over time in the next financial way. And so he said, why should we play that zero-sum game when we can play a positive sum game and keep growing that pie for all of us and make it better as opposed to only fighting? And so it seems to keep going back. I was going to say we keep defaulting to this, though, because even though blue ocean is a very widely recognized concept, then disruption, again, turns into a zero-sum game. So it seems to be the comfortable place that humans always go back to. Well, that is true. I think to a lot of extent is, what was so I would say, yeah, I was going to say a certain type, but I would say, yes, I think a lot of people find that they're looking for that growth and comfort don't really coexist. You want to get more muscles. You have to strain yourself. You have to hurt, right? Every time we grow, we have to step into a discomfort to expand that. So there is some of that. There's also just histories far far longer, right? Going all the way back. Sun Zhu and an interesting way, he always taught the best way to win a war is not to enter the war. But you're right about that. It is a high default, but you know, we will start keep charging forward in our way because we see that it is possible. We can, you know, decodify that. And I think organizations can get a lot better. And just because something is doesn't mean I fully agree. And this should be and we're going to keep marching forward. Jessica, I hope you'll march forward with this. I will definitely end you right. History is long. History is very long. And there's a lot to learn from it. And, you know, let me say another thing, it's got to clarify, you know, competing has a troll as it's creating. They both do. Unfortunately, business is no longer monotone. We have to manage paradoxes. We have to be good short term and we have to think long term. We have to understand how to disrupt as well, disruption matters, but also we have to understand non-destructive opportunities. So it's more challenging in that sense, but to not accept that reality is to sort of bury our head in the sand and hope that our body doesn't get hit. And I just think that we need to be open to it. And, you know, we've saw when we started looking at non-destructive, we started just thinking about it. And, you know, we start really around. Think about it. Business books are our own category. It was a non-destructive opportunity in the whole book industry. Didn't displace any other category when it was born. It really started with insertive excellence, really. That was first real big business book. Before that, there really weren't business books. And, wow, but didn't displace, and no one stuck reading literature, more whatever, just a lot of still learning about business. Then I look at teens, you know, they have a lot whole new category of teen books. Never existed before. Didn't displace. Just engaged teens by talking books that talk about their issues. Wow, home category, you know, and then I have dogs and my little daughter would say, mom, can we get this pet Halloween costume when we're supposed to look at this model? Wow, pet Halloween costumes never existed before. Didn't displace. That's a $500 million industry. And the war we started thinking about it, and look at these industry after industry, when you have that lens and you start to see it, you start to pay attention to it, and we start to realize how much more prevalent and how much money and opportunity and impact we can have in that space. If we bring it to our consciousness, you know, it's just like the first time you hear a new word, you never heard that word, and then suddenly you're at a party and you hear it. And then you go, and then you read an article, oh my god, there's that word. And you thought no one ever uses archaic word and you start popping up, because now your mind is attuned to it. And I think that's what we're hoping the book will help to do. Get us attuned to non-destructive opportunities and thinking more positive, son, as opposed to, and by the way, it creates a lot more hope than just, uh, destruction is also, um, and it's not an attack, but it's a fear-based way. If I tell you, I'm going to just drop you, Scott, oh, believe me, you don't like me right away. Yeah. I'm your, you're in an anxiety mode, and an attack mode. And if I, if you say to yourself, to your team, we're going to disrupt ourselves. Oh boy, they're going to go home and say to their wife or to their husband, Scott wants to disrupt his honey. I'm not sure. And six months, who is that mean to my job? Yeah. Yeah. What's going to happen to me now, right? You know, I'm the other thing I want to say, um, Scott is this AI thing. I think that a lot of people today, whether companies are talking about it with their staff or not, people are reading AI is everywhere. They're, or their kids are trying it, or they're trying it night, and they're saying, oh my god, with two prompts, like, it can write an article for me. Somebody did a test, and they said, it was amazing. They said, write a story about a piece, I don't have it exact, so please forgive me, I'm an aggregate. Write a story about a piece of celery who falls in main Marty, who falls in love with a peanut, they move to France, they start a bakery, and then they have an almond, I don't know, an almond for a house or whatever. And they said, just write this story, chat GBT goes, right? Little Marty, Miss Sally, Liz Green, and Sweet, and he meant this cute little guy. And it was so sweet, and I thought, my god, this could be a best-selling book. My daughter would think it's adorable, you know? So people at my point is, people see this and what it can do. And they're, whether they're having that conversation or not, they're starting to think about their own job. Like, wow, what does that mean? And we all know companies are under stress, we see today, people getting lay off again, and again, just for the economy, right, in the lot and the IT and other sectors. So people are wondering, and so I think a really worthwhile conversation in a company is to realize technology is a means to an end. What do I do that technology? Do I aim it at efficiency and productivity? I'm going to lose employees, but I have another opportunity if we start thinking together in our company. Can we think about how could we leverage that to create non-destructive opportunities where we can create growth and hopefully new jobs for ways we can transition in so that we can keep our value boom for ease and grow? And I believe that's an important discussion to have. And it's also an inspiring one as a lot of people, I think, are starting to wonder. And even if they're not wondering today, believe me, at the rate, if we project out where it's going, they're going to be worrying, thinking about it in six months or eight months or a year, what can we do event? I think it's better to think in advance and try to get ahead of the curve if we can, then to get hit by it and kind of be in the valley of death. And one more thing with fear, trying to figure this out. So I would think like that, you know? What's the next book you hope you'll be able to write? Spot, you're killing me now, you're killing me now, you know? That is a very conflict for a researcher. You're like growing gray hairs as I ask that question because it's so so stressful. It's asking a woman, you know, just had a child, when's the next one she's like, oh, believe me, I'm just really surviving, getting out. You know, we're going to listen really carefully as we talk to people, we find out what are their challenges, right? So we had, and where do they need more understanding? So you I'll go back after our discussion, right? So, you know, our books are a way to try to share what we learned and what we've studied. But in a way like when I'm interviewing you, you're my educator. I'm learning from you. I hear what your concerns are, what your questions are. We will go back and we'll really start thinking about what really matters, where are areas that we could fill in to help organizations move? What are some of the hurdles or stumbling blocks they have in embracing this idea? And so we really interact with the market and with people and with businesses. And we listen very carefully. So, you know, in our book we talk about one thing is that, you know, what can trip you up on this path? And we say, you know, be ready for discouragement from the pundits. Which you think we have a few, but one of them is, be, don't take others' assumptions as your own. It's very important. You know, people will tell you it's not the way it's done, but don't take that other's assumptions because, you know, when we're setting Sesame Street, you know, all the people in the education industry said, little children cannot learn by watching and have to learn by doing. You cannot have a silly puppet teach education. No kid will take it seriously. And also, you cannot miss fantasy and song with serious education. Kids need to be sitting down and be serious to learn. And she said, if we had ever listened, Joan Genskuni, to what the educator said about how education should be, Sesame Street would never be born, right? So one, you know, one problem is don't take others' assumptions as your own think for yourself. That goes back to my first point. You say, how did we create these ideas? You saw them as counter intuitive. We think for ourselves and we observe for ourselves, right? That's very important. A lot of people out others to think for them. That's number one. The second thing is, though, don't get ready for discouragement from the pundits. And when you're ready to be discouraged from the pundits, you actually get hit less when it happens because you're expecting it. But at the same time, you don't want to poo poo it because you want to say, well, why did they have that? And if you have a good reputation for why it's irrelevant, you get strengthened your ideas. But if you can't say, wow, we couldn't really speak to that. We don't really have a good answer for that. We don't know why our product won't work in that situation. It teaches you where you need to strengthen where your idea and where you're not as good. And so I say to you, that is what, when you say, what will our next book be, we are going to be passionate about we do in marching forward. We're not discouraged by the pundits because we've seen what it is. But we're also going to learn from the pundits. And we're going to make sure when I say, wow, what couldn't we have answered? What should we answer? How can we help people more? Because our idea isn't just to put a book out there. It's to try in a small way, a big way, maybe even a tiny way, to try to make some difference. You know, my grandfather, he lived to over 100. And he gave me his most beautiful gap at the very end. And he said, Renee, I want to talk to you for a minute. And I said, yeah, I've been thinking about it because he was bad-ridden, but he never lost his mind. And he said, if I had to think about, you know, what makes a good life, for me, it only comes down to two activities. And he said, that is to strive and to give. And he said, never stop striving to try to make a difference in this world, whether big or small, so it's better than when you came. Don't give up on that. And then he said, never stop giving to those who love. And I remember I walked out of that room and I thought, I'm just chained up and I said, thank you. You have given me the best gift in my life. That was of all the gifts that gave me growing up, those two were striving and giving. And so, good advice. It's very good advice. What would you, what would be one final lesson, or one final question that I should have asked you that I didn't, that you think would be useful for somebody listening? I think that if you're fortunate enough, you know, I went on this journey with my colleague, Chan Kim, for over 30 years. And I think that we both, it's been really rewarding and powerful for both of us along the journey, hence 30 years. And I think that we always look for and value and try to understand the value each of us brings to the table and respect that. And I think doing that with your, in an organization, with your employees, and if you can have a really great, to build a really strong team like that, I think that's indispensable. Because sometimes you have blind spots you don't see, and they see them for you. They're active as your eyes. When you get, when you know, you get hit by something, they can provide a different way to think about it. So I think building a strong team is very, very critical. And I know it's certainly benefit us in our journey. And I think building strong teams in our companies and with those we work and that are based on really a lot of mutual respect and alignment of values. So we're both very hard working. We're both very, you know, perfectionists in our own way. We align in our viewpoint of what we're trying to achieve. We, you know, when we achieve setbacks, we keep marching forward. And that's very powerful, I think. So I would say I'm building a team to maybe take some actions like that. But other than that's got to love to your questions. And I love your manner, your, yeah, I love telling people because I just feel that. Thank you. We often think things you don't articulate them. But you have such a winning way. I appreciate that. Very kind. I try to ask more questions that I think your audience cares about. And I really respect that. And so I thank you. I appreciate you a lot. And I actually really enjoyed the conversation a lot. This is right up my alley. And I could probably do a much longer podcast than anyone else would listen to just about all the topics we just went into. But before we close it out, I want to give you the opportunity. Where should people go to connect with you? So the socials, the website, a little bit more, but where they can get the book, of course, all the regular spots, the Amazon's and whatnot. But any links or anything else you want to drop? You know, whatever just says our main link, which is www.bluetianstrategy.com and from there, you know, our socials are there for our work. And you know, they can also go to www.INSEAD, which is our school, our university.edu and they can find, you know, we have an institute there and they can find us there as well. But I would really say www.Bluetianstrategy.com can one stop shopping, can direct them everywhere. And yes, of course, you know, Amazon as well and the other usual suspects for the books. Perfect. Okay. And then the last question that I ask everyone, before we close this out, you've had an incredible career at this point in your life. What does success mean to you? Okay. So Scott, I didn't know you're going to ask that question. No, that's fine. That's fine. You can take time to it. You can take time to think about it. It's not a trick. It's just because you've achieved a lot. And I think that people's definition of success changes over time and I'm curious what yours is now. Well, it's against different spheres, but one is for us success in the way we took our whole career was simply doing our best every day. That was what we were always trying to achieve. It was just, did we do our best today? That would be in work. And I think success in life is just knowing whether have I been a good partner to my researcher, which and Kim, have I been a good daughter to my parents? Have I been a good sister to my brother? And have I been a good mother to my daughter where I put things down when she comes in the room and I spend really valuable time with her? Have I been a good friend to my friends? And I ask myself those questions, often every morning over a coffee, you know, before the day starts and the house is awake in the dark. I sit there and I'm not that I achieve it, but I try to think consciously about that.