Disruption meets marketing: CMO's fasten your seatbelts!

"Disruptive Guru" Clayton M. Christensen, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School in action at the SAS Leadership Conference in Las Vegas.The venue in vibrant Las Vegas raised high expectations. In addition to the founder and CEO of the SAS Institute - Jim Goodnight - two high-profile keynoters were announced:- Professor Clayton Christensen from Harvard Business School, known for his bestseller "The Innovators Dilemma"- George Blankenship, Retail Executive of The GAP, Apple and Tesla MotorsThis report focuses on the presentation by Professor Clayton Christensen, who has conducted groundbreaking research over the last ten years that is also central to the field of marketing today.Business disruption as the key to growthHis central thesis is that business disruption is the key to growth. He explains that the financial ratios in use today fuel short-term thinking and thus favor investments in the further optimization of existing solutions. There is a lack of funds for risky innovation investments that take more time, and so breakthrough new solutions are increasingly rare.Illustrated with examples of developments from the mainframe computer to the disruptive Apple personal computer to the disruptive smartphone offering. With these innovative offerings, large corporations have come under massive pressure or even been driven into bankruptcy (Digital Equipment, Nokia, Blackberry, etc.). So how can the innovators' performance be characterized? They change an existing complicated product into a simple and cheap one and thus make it accessible to a large group of market participants (affordable & accessible).Focus on non-consumptionChristensen's second thesis relates directly to marketing: For decades, marketeers have been analyzing customers and their consumption. But innovators mainly look at non-consumption in their search for breakthroughs. Where are the white spots of meaningful applications that could lead to a breakthrough new product? With the familiar customer/user analysis, we run the risk of suffocating in the optimization spiral of the existing.Causality between purchase and the buyer?In his third thesis, the Harvard professor warns against assuming a causal link between customer attributes and a specific purchase. According to his research findings, a causal relationship between a purchase and the respective buyer only exists in the form of a "job to be done", i.e. a task wants or needs to be performed. The term "job" can be applied to private and business situations. For this purpose, as a customer, I use products and services to do a job or satisfy a need with their help.I am aware that I can only touch on the fundamentally important insights of Professor Clayton Christensen superficially here. What I recommend in the sense of deepening is to watch one of the presentations of Professor Christensen on Youtube - he speaks a well understandable English and has the talent to present complicated issues very vividly.

Business Leaders are impressedThe 400 business leaders present in Las Vegas were impressed by Christensen's insights and by the convincing and consistent argumentation. The relevance for business and for marketing is, in my view, downright overwhelming.CMO's can assume that various disruptive forces will massively challenge their function. Christensen's insights are one element of this, digitalization (social, mobile, big data, cloud) is another field and so hardly one stone will be left upon another. It is to be hoped that marketing bosses will trim themselves fit in time.