Disruptive Leadership

For those of you who read the print version of BusinessWeek, you know that Jack and Susan Welch write a weekly column on the last page.  This week’s article is “Corporate Social Responsibility in a Recession” or his edgier online title “Giving in Unforgiving Times.”  It’s a good primer on corporate social responsibility (CSR), which they categorize into three types:

• Donating money, products or services.
• Community involvement
• CSR as a corporate strategy

… with a conclusion that essentially states the obvious: in tough times companies will likely have to cut back their CSR activities, just as they will have to streamline other areas of business.

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I have a google alert set to “Disruptive Leadership.”  It is not a term that is widely used, so I typically get an alert on the topic about once a month.  It is usually a reference to my blog, or a few articles that come up over and over again (which I’ve already referenced on my site).  This one got my attention, as it was just an embedded YouTube video found on this blog site.  The production values are low, and its not clear what the blog and/or author is all about, but it has some good leadership concepts that I happen to agree with.  

I especially liked a quote the author used in the video: 

It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemngly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.  

Alan Cohen (Author, “Chicken Soup for the Soul”)

Enjoy.

This post is the second part of a two-part series on thought leadership for computer makers in emerging markets. Part 1 focused on the companies striving for thought leadership over the last several years … OLPC, Intel, Microsoft, and AMD. Part 2 discusses the characteristics companies will need to develop if they want to become a “thought leader.”

What is a thought leader?

There is a great quote from an unknown author that I believe is a perfect definition of thought leadership:

Thought leadership is recognition from the outside world that a company deeply understands its business, the needs of its customers, and the broader marketplace in which it operates.

Thought leadership is built on what others say about you. When you have it, companies look to you for insight and vision, journalists quote you, analysts call you.

Source: http://www.elise.com/web/a/be_a_thought_leader.php

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Four years ago, Nicholas Negroponte announced the One Laptop per Child initiative and the $100 laptop to much fanfare in Davos, Switzerland. He captured the imaginations of world leaders with promises of ultra-affordable computing for school children around the world. He talked about changing the way children learn, improving their education and ultimately accelerating their access to the knowledge economy by deploying hundreds of millions of laptops.

That same year, Intel’s nemesis AMD launched the 50×15 program with the goal of increasing internet access to 50% of the world’s population by the year 2015. Unlike with Negroponte’s announcement, AMD launched their program with an actual existing product, the Personal Internet Communicator (PIC).

These announcements put Intel, my employer at the time, on notice. The press from these two initiatives got under the skin of the company executives. The typical complaint: “We invest millions in emerging markets, and ship millions of low-cost PCs, but we get no recognition from it.” Intel’s “thought leadership” effort was thus born. I was asked to pull a strategy and plan together to help Intel gain the perceived leadership position in bringing computing and internet access to under-served markets that currently don’t have access. [Read the rest of this entry...]

I’ve always thought that the next major technology disruption would come from the developing world. This could partly be just a bias on my part (most of my career has been developing computer businesses in emerging markets). The underlying logic behind this belief is that disruptive innovations are cheaper, easier to use, and bring some type of end user value that doesn’t exist in the current mainstream solution.

Emerging markets clearly require a more affordable solution. They also require something that is easy to use due to higher illiteracy rates and limited skills. Finally, in order for them to decide to use their hard-earned money on something, it has to be useful for them. Take a look at the PC. Even if someone gave PC’s away for free, you still wouldn’t see PC’s sales go through the roof. Sure, there’d be a big bump, but not to the penetration level you see with TV’s and other basic household appliances.

Even if a PC was made so easy to use (e.g. streamline and simplify the interface with large, logical icons) so someone that couldn’t read or had no computer skills could use the PC easily, they likely wouldn’t see that much value in it. The missing element is some unique value for consumers and micro-enterprises at the bottom of the pyramid. I don’t think this value exists in PC’s today.

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