The Disruptive Voice

We sat down with Bob Moesta, the President and CEO of The ReWired Group, and pioneer of the Jobs To Be Done Theory. The topic: spotting and strategizing around non-consumption. Through this lens companies can see where they can enter a market and compete against...nothing!

We've built this podcast on top of the ideas taught in Professor Clayton M. Christensen's signature course at the Harvard Business School, Building and Sustaining a Successful Enterprise (BSSE). This episode opens with Professor Christensen talking about the purpose of the BSSE course, and then transitions into a Q&A session with a group of alumni of the course, ranging from recent graduates to alumni who left HBS fifteen years ago. Topics include making predictions about the future of the electric car, how to handle acquisitions, how to think about being disrupted -- even when you are the disruptor!, using theory to make better decisions in your personal life, and the power of a good theory and common language.

If nonconsumption were a company in Nigeria (or any other emerging market), it would almost certainly have a monopoly in many of the country's major industries. Yet investors and multinational companies often wait until there is a proven market before they are willing to invest. Senior researcher Efosa Ojomo published an article in Emerging Markets Business Review on this paradox, and in this episode offers tips on how to spot opportunities that seem uninteresting to many, but in fact offer the greatest potential for impact and exponential upside for the savvy investor.

During Steve Kaufman’s 14 years as CEO of Arrow Electronics (NYSE: ARW), the company completed over 50 acquisitions and grew from a $300 million US-centric corporation to a $12 billion global enterprise ranking within the top 200 companies on the Fortune 500 list. In 2005, Electronics Business magazine named Kaufman one of the ten most influential executives in the electronics industry over the past 25 years. In this episode, Professor Steve Kaufman shares with us some of the unique insights that teaching BSSE for over ten years has led him to understand, and what sort of help he has been able to offer the dozens of companies of varying stage, size, and industry that he advises as a board member.

Agriculture was once the leading industry in Nigeria, but decades of mismanagement caused the industry to decline. Today, the nation which once had a promising export crop business must import food in order to support its explosive population. Over the last decade, the Nigerian government has chosen to focus many of its resources on natural gas and oil production, which today accounts for more than 98% of export earnings even though it only accounts for less than 3% of the world's oil supply. In this episode of the Disruptive Voice, senior researcher Efosa Ojomo talks with Folusho Olaniyan, former Managing Director, United Trading Company (UTC) Nigeria Plc and CEO of Contact Consulting Nigeria, about what needs to change in order for Nigeria's agriculture industry to be rebuilt into a sustainable and successful enterprise.

BSSE students and alumni will know all too well why Professor Clayton Christensen was so excited to learn in 2015 that U.S. Steel was finally building a mini-mill at their Fairfield Works plant in Alabama. Several months later, however, the project was postponed. Does theory have an opinion about why U.S. Steel chose not to go forward with the construction of their electric arc furnace? In this episode, we share some brief reflections by Professor Christensen recorded in January. 

Nothing like using a trick question to rile up five theory experts who have strong opinions about Uber, the latest Silicon Valley company to have its name verb-ified to describe most any entrepreneurial venture in the on-demand economy.

In this episode, we revisit Professor Clayton M. Christensen’s December 2015 article in Harvard Business Review, “What Is Disruptive Innovation,” with article co-author Rory McDonald, as well as four long-time collaborators with Professor Christensen: Innosight Managing Partner Scott D. Anthony, Christensen Institute co-founder Michael B. Horn, and Forum Senior Researchers Tom Bartman and Efosa Ojomo.

While this panel of theory experts share a strict set of guidelines to define what is and isn’t disruptive, their application of the theory to Uber varies quite widely. And yet — their outlook for the future varies much less than you might think.

Laura E. Day (MBA 2009) spent one year (2014–2015) at the Forum for Growth and Innovation studying the consumer robotics industry through the lens of the jobs-to-be-done theory and upon leaving the Forum became cofounder of smart device company Moti. In this episode of the Disruptive Voice, Laura uses her favorite theory to explain why the military application of robots is light years ahead of the consumer application (hint: it’s not because it’s easier technology to build!) and how she is using the various theories and tools of the BSSE course to ensure that her new product and start-up company are both successful and sustainable in their design and growth.

The World Bank was founded in 1944 to facilitate post-war Reconstruction and today has grown to encompass five affiliated institutions dedicated to eradicating poverty worldwide. In this episode of the Disruptive Voice, senior researcher Efosa Ojomo uses the theories of BSSE to describe how the very same structures that allow the World Bank to have its extraordinary reach also constrain it from being able to fund or support other types of initiatives.

Founded in 1988, BlackRock (BLK) has grown from being a provider of fixed income investment products into the preeminent global asset manager that it is today. Unlike its major competitors, BlackRock insisted on being an integrated platform and employed an acquisition strategy that we would call LBM (leverage my business model) to become a one-stop-shop for investment products. It would seem only natural, then, that BlackRock would likely employ a similar LBM-type integration in its recent acquisition of robo-advisory firm FutureAdvisor, but as 2016 MBA graduates Greg Duggan and Ravi Umarji studied this transaction through the lens of the theories of our course, BSSE, they came up with a different recommendation for the management team.