Redefining Innovation: Why True Disruption Requires a Director of Disruptive Innovation
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My POV: TL;DR
I’ve spent a lot of time inside large enterprises with so many different departments and titles it boggles the mind how they get anything done. But one consistent pattern I’ve seen is that regardless of what department your talking about, there is a desire to have the word innovation in your job title and/or cubicle placard.
You are not an innovator.
Innovation is not determined until what your enterprise produces and releases a product to the market, or creates a new market while replacing (disrupting) several other markets, and in away that has others brands and categories scrambling to catch up. This has nothing to do with made up milestones like Product-Market Fit (PMF). It means doing something akin to what Apple did when they first introduced the iPod, and then fairly rapidly stepped on it with the iPhone.
These two events wiped out quite a few cottage industries and well-established industries at the same time by getting a significant number of jobs done for customers on a new platform that delivered (more) value in a completely new way; while eliminating not just one struggle stack, but many struggle stacks (obfuscation).
In short:
Marketers are not innovators
Product teams are not innovators
Design teams are not innovators
Front-end of Innovation teams are not innovators, either
No offense 😇.
Innovation requires the collective and coordinated work of the organization to introduce disruptive solutions to the market. The result is the innovation. The process is innovation itself.
Who orchestrates that process?
A Suggested New Enterprise Role
Director of Disruptive Innovation
The Director of Disruptive Innovation is a visionary leader responsible for guiding the company through the entire journey from uncovering market insights to launching groundbreaking products that redefine industries. This role combines market research, technological foresight, design excellence, and strategic marketing to create offerings that disrupt existing markets or establish new ones, much like the iPhone did in 2007.
Insight Generation
Conduct effective in-depth market research to identify unmet customer needs, pain points, and emerging trends.
Use Jobs-to-be-Done framing, ethnographic studies, customer observations, and data analysis to uncover both explicit and latent desires—similar to how Apple recognized people’s unarticulated wish for a unified device.
Concept Development
Facilitate cross-functional collaboration to brainstorm and evaluate innovative product ideas based on precisely targeted insights.
Leverage emerging technologies (e.g., touchscreens for Apple) and creative design principles to address identified needs in novel ways.
Product Realization
Oversee the design and development process to ensure the product is technically feasible, user-centric, and aesthetically compelling.
Focus on integrating multiple functionalities into a seamless user experience, as Apple did by combining a phone, iPod, and internet communicator.
Market Introduction
Develop a go-to-market strategy that positions the product as revolutionary, generates excitement, and drives adoption—mirroring Apple’s pre-launch hype and narrative of the iPhone as a game-changer.
Craft a compelling story that highlights the product’s unique value proposition.
Continuous Improvement
Monitor market feedback and performance metrics post-launch.
Iterate on the product to maintain its competitive edge and adapt to evolving customer expectations.
Qualifications
Experience: Proven track record in predictive market research, product development, and marketing, with success in launching innovative and disruptive products repeatedly.
Skills: Strong analytical abilities, creativity, leadership, and communication skills to align and inspire cross-functional teams.
Mindset: A forward-thinking, systems-thinking, visionary approach to anticipate trends and customer needs, even before customers articulate them—just as Steve Jobs famously emphasized showing people what they want.
Job to be Done
The job to be done defines the core purpose this role serves for the company. Drawing from Apple’s iPhone journey, it’s not just about creating a product but about transforming the company’s trajectory through innovation. Here’s the framed job to be done:
"Orchestrate the end-to-end process of transforming market insights into disruptive products that redefine customer expectations and establish the company as a leader in innovation."
Breaking Down the Job
Why it Exists: The company needs a structured yet creative process to stay ahead of competitors and drive growth by capitalizing on market opportunities.
What it Achieves: It delivers products that don’t just incrementally improve but fundamentally shift how customers interact with a category—like the iPhone did for mobile devices.
How it Succeeds: By integrating deep customer understanding, cutting-edge technology, intuitive design, and powerful marketing into a cohesive strategy.
Expected Outcomes
A pipeline of innovative product ideas rooted in predictive customer insights (not based on past behaviors alone).
The successful launch of disruptive products that capture market share and create new revenue streams.
A strengthened brand reputation as an industry innovator, akin to Apple’s post-iPhone dominance.
How This Reflects Apple’s iPhone Process
Apple’s introduction of the iPhone offers a blueprint:
Market Insight: They identified that customers struggled with disjointed devices (phones, MP3 players, PDAs) and craved simplicity and integration.
Innovation: They leveraged existing technologies (e.g., multi-touch screens) in a new way, paired with a focus on design and usability.
Execution: The development process prioritized a sleek, intuitive interface that set a new standard.
Market Impact: Apple’s marketing framed the iPhone as a revolutionary leap, not just a phone, creating massive demand and disrupting the mobile industry.
The Director of Disruptive Innovation would replicate this by connecting the dots across research, technology, design, and market strategy, ensuring every step builds toward a breakthrough offering.
Why This Role Matters
By framing the role as the Director of Disruptive Innovation with the job to be done as "orchestrating the transformation of market insights into disruptive products," you capture the essence of Apple’s iPhone success while providing a practical framework for any organization aiming to innovate at that level.
It suggests a clear mission.
To frame a role and a "job to be done" for the end-to-end process of identifying market opportunities and turning them into a disruptive product—like Apple did with the iPhone—we need to define a position that oversees insight generation, innovation, development, and market introduction. Below, I’ll outline a comprehensive role and its corresponding job to be done, inspired by Apple’s approach with the iPhone, where they reimagined the mobile phone by integrating communication, entertainment, and internet access into a seamless, intuitive device.
Summing up
This - in effect - is the basic requirement of an ideal CEO because this is who CROs, CMOs, COOs, etc. report to. Without tight coordination, what we get are numerous siloed functions that believe they have the mandate to generate their own insights, and execute independently.
When looking at this from the outside, it appears to be chaos … because it is.
Does your CEO exhibit these characteristics? If not, who does (with authority)?
Based on the high percentage of product launch failures, my guess is no one. I know, harsh 🫥
Mike Boysen - www.pjtbd.com
Why fail fast when you can succeed the first time?
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