What does it mean to be a Christian innovator in the 21st century? Attend the Imagine 2016 to find answers to this question. I was asked to write about the conference and received permission to interview one of the conference hosts, Uday Balasundaram, Ph.D.
I decided to ask Uday about the ethic and import of disruption as a facet of innovative leadership. Why disruption? Disruption is a key term today in politics and business. For example, many view Donald Trump as an innovative leader in politics and business who employs “disruption.” Here’s what Mel Robbins wrote in her recent CNN article on Trump:
The GOP establishment has been wrong at every turn, and Trump has been right. In business, there’s an explanation for this: disruption. That’s what Trump has done – he’s disrupted politics as usual and changed the rules entirely. As I argued in January, once disrupters such as Amazon, Uber and Airbnb get out front, they become nearly impossible to beat.
Whether or not Trump is truly a disruptive innovator, we need to ask the following questions: What do we mean by disruption? Are there good and bad forms of disruption? If good, how do we create a constructive culture of disruption in the Christian community as leaders? Readers are encouraged to read the article in Harvard Business Review titled “What Is Disruptive Innovation?” The article describes “disruption” in business along the following lines:
“Disruption” describes a process whereby a smaller company with fewer resources is able to successfully challenge established incumbent businesses. Specifically, as incumbents focus on improving their products and services for their most demanding (and usually most profitable) customers, they exceed the needs of some segments and ignore the needs of others. Entrants that prove disruptive begin by successfully targeting those overlooked segments, gaining a foothold by delivering more-suitable functionality—frequently at a lower price. Incumbents, chasing higher profitability in more-demanding segments, tend not to respond vigorously. Entrants then move upmarket, delivering the performance that incumbents’ mainstream customers require, while preserving the advantages that drove their early success. When mainstream customers start adopting the entrants’ offerings in volume, disruption has occurred.
Disruption appears to be good for business practice, when it accounts for addressing the needs of customers who are often ignored by established businesses in favor of their most choosy and successful customers. Incumbent companies can end up focusing on unnecessary accessories, while new and disruptive companies create functional products at lower prices for the customer base before expanding their reach by going upmarket. Incumbents have a difficult time adapting because they have focused a great deal of their energies on cementing ties with their most valued customers and enhancing products for them. If incumbents are going to guard against being disrupted, they need to continue to adapt by branching out and creating new innovative lines, just as smaller and newer disruptive companies do. Perhaps the old saying is apt here: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
No doubt, there are parallels in politics and religion. For our purposes, we will focus on religion. As Uday shared with me, creativity is core to our constitution as humans. The image of God involves creativity, as we were created to create. Creativity is ultimately disruptive. How might this be? Further to our conversation, creativity counters sterility and entropy, where things ultimately die and decay. According to Uday, isolation does not foster creativity. Rather, participation in community is creativity’s birthplace. Thus, creativity involves participation and diversity. Just think of the Triune God in whose image we exist and move and have our being. We participate in the life of God where oneness is not uniformity, but involves the particularity of Father, Son, and Spirit.
In reflecting further on the interview, consider how God disrupted the chaos of our self-imposed isolation through Jesus’ incarnation and the Spirit’s descent. Whereas we would build towers of Babel for ourselves in isolation from God, God destroys these idols so as to share life with us and pour out his creative and holy love on people of every background, tribe, and tongue. God disrupts and humbles the incumbents, as well as the proud and those of high standing, and reaches out and lifts up the lowly.
This particular theological construal of disruption does not fit Trump or those religious “disrupters” who hail him as king. They are more like the German Christians who embraced the ambitions of the Third Reich. While Trump is seen as a disrupter, it is destructive and isolationist in rhetoric and substance. In seeking to make America great again, he does not celebrate true diversity and participation; while he harnesses the fears and anxieties of the multitudes, he does not create in community; there is no real dialogue. Rather, he lords it over the masses and manipulates them. Christian innovators who wish to disrupt in creative rather than destructive ways must look elsewhere—to Christian Scripture and the disruptive witness of Saint Paul to the triune God:
I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it says, “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.” (Ephesians 4:1-8)
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