Building the Capacity for Disruptive Thinking

If you want to change things, it often makes sense to be radical or disruptive. It is a quality you can learn to see things differently. Not the way they should be, but to see something that others do not see yet. In this context, we usually speak of companies. But you can also use it for yourself as a person to transform yourself. I mentioned that in my last article about plant medicine. In some cases for example ayahuasca has the potential to awake you or disrupt you (in a good or bad way). I share most of my life with entrepreneurs and companies. This then leads to how we can permanently adapt companies to changing environments (I do not recommend psychedelics here). But I try to explain the basic idea behind the disruption.

In the business context, disruption refers to the introduction of a new product or a new way of working that results in existing patterns within an industry being overturned. Disruptive innovation occurs when a company looks beyond what currently exists and wants to exist. Such a company learns to see what others cannot see - emerging patterns and trends in an evolving world.

A disorder circumvents existing dysfunctional patterns in a system, patterns that generate more negative side effects than benefits. The aim is to create an alternative prototype that is consistent with the deeper intentions or aspirations of the system. Elon Musk describes the intentional disorder as a "return to the first principles ". We also use similar models in our Jungle Framework.

The return to the first principles enables people to make a new start. Perhaps the easiest way to describe a regeneration process is to say that it breaks a known pattern by returning to the original source to take a different path. From this new path, people can make connections they did not make before because they see the world in a new way. By breaking the old way of seeing and the certainties associated with it, by questioning everything, they can make an imaginative leap into what does not yet exist but will come when they find a way to create the necessary conditions. Another good way here is Socratic Dialog. It´s about asking deeper questions after questions. The principle underlying the Socratic method is that you learn through the use of critical thinking, reasoning, and logic.

To create disruptive innovations, we have to break with our habits - how we make life meaningful. To be innovative in human work, we must redesign the way we work, our idea of life and our interpretation of human nature.

Malte