Full Visual Summary: Disrupt Yourself by Whitney Johnson 2022

According to Disrupt Yourself, a disruptive idea is a business’ “engine” — the thing that drives its success.

Start-up companies are always looking for ways they can disrupt themselves.

The tech sector is constantly changing and evolving.

Companies rise and fall, new companies come into existence, old ones disappear. Some companies make a big splash, others fade into obscurity. One day they’re hot, the next day they’re not.

But what hasn’t changed is the industry’s focus on innovation.

No matter how much things may change around them, technology companies remain focused on pushing the boundaries of what can be done and finding ways to do it better than anyone else.

Not only is it true for companies, but it’s also true for individuals.

If you’re not interested in reading the entire book, then just check out this summary.

It provides an overall view of everything you could possibly be able to gain from this book.

Let’s begin!

(I have broken up paragraphs into sentences for easy reading.)

Here’s how the summary works to give you a framework for quick read and easy assimilation of the ideas around the book.

1. Gist of the entire chapter in one sentence.
2. Key pointers of introduction and the 7 chapters.
3. Action you can take. (No point learning without taking any action since experience will beat knowledge

Chapter 1: Take The Right Risk

Chapter 2: Play Your Distinctive Strengths

Chapter 3: Embrace Constraints

Chapter 4: Battle Entitlement, The Innovation Killer

Chapter 5: Step Down, Back, Sideways To Grow

Chapter 6: Give Failure It’s Due

Chapter 7: By Driven By Discovery

A ridiculous way to remember the 7 chapters:

Picture Right Of Your Wrist With A Tag That Says “Right Risk” with each Finger with Different Tools Made Out Of Utensils Representing Different Strengths and Constraint Within A Pink Balloon.

And when you move your finger up, grows up, move sideways, it grows sideways, move down and it grow downwards.

Meaning innovation can be done by expanding up, niching down and changing market sideways.

Red, Bloody, callous, yet muscular looking hands with the word “Failures” burnt into palm.

And floating over the palm is the icon of a rotating Discovery Channel globe representing we have to always be on a mode of discovery & exploration.

I know it sounds weird to imagine that, and it is precisely meant to be weird and exaggerated that you will remember it.

Introduction

What Is This Chapter About?

Story of how Whitney when from being music major to being a secretary of a retail sales broker at Smith Barney, to becoming an equity analyst at Merrill Lynch and finally launching her own investment firm with Clayton Christensen and a professor for Harvard Business School.

She shares her first experience learning from Clayton Christensen about disruption when she witnesses for almost a decade mobile penetration stayed at 1% but ramped up to 25% within just 5 years.

She shares that the purpose of the book is not to cope with the disruptive waves that will keep coming but how to ride on them.

She also shares about the S curve developed by E.M. Rogers in 1962 relates to disruptive innovation with examples from Facebook to Golfing.

Now you can use her 7 ways to ride up the S Curve.

Chapter 1: Take The Right Risk

What Is This Chapter About?
In order to disrupt yourself, you have to take the right risk by:

1. Identifying what needs to be accomplished
   Usually what needs to be accomplished usually fulfill 2 elements.
   Both functional and emotional.
   eg. A house does not just fulfil the functional need a of shelter but also choosing a location also fulfils an emotional need of convenience
   She also gives a few more examples when it comes to using social media and hirring.
2. Identifying the Right Risk
   If someone has already done it, then you have a competitor and that’s called “Competitive Risk”.
   If no one has done it before, then you are the first do it because no one else has done it before, you are facing “Market Risk”
   She quoted a case study about hard disk industry and discovered that hard disk companies that took on “Market Risk” are 6 times more successful and generate 20 times more revenue than those who took “Competitive Risk”
   And she gives more evidence from University to NBA.
3. Avoiding the wrong risk
   It can be risky when you have a new idea but no staying power.
   It can also be risky when you’re in competitive mode as it creates stress and decrease in performance.
4. Identifying a job no one else can do
   Needless to say, this is common sense.

Chapter 2: Play To Your Distinctive Strengths

What Is This Chapter About?
In order to disrupt yourself, you have to play to your strengths by:

1. Identifying what you do well
2. Identifying your distinctive strengths
3. Matching your strengths with unmet needs
4. Knowing the low side of this

Chapter 3: Embrace Constraints

What Is This Chapter About?
In order to disrupt yourself, you have to embrace constraints by:

1. Allowing constraints to provide faster feedback
2. Allowing constraints to help solve one variable at a time
3. Allowing constraints to help you stay focus
4. Imposing constraints to optimized one performance
5. Being aware of your psychological or emotional constraints
6. Turning constraints into an advantage
7. Realizing that constraints gives us something to fight against and win

Chapter 4: Battle Entitlement, The Innovation Killer

You will achieve the greatest results in business and career if you drop the word “achievement” from your vocabulary and replace it with “contribution.” — Peter Drucker

What Is This Chapter About?
In order to disrupt yourself, you have to battle entitlement by:

1. Being aware of cultural entitlement
2. Exposing yourself to new cultures
3. Being aware of emotional entitlement
4. Being grateful
5. Being aware of intellectual entitlement
6. Being open to opposition opinions
7. Disrupting yourself before others

Chapter 5: Step Down, Step Back Or Sideways To Grow

What Is This Chapter About?
In order to disrupt yourself, you have to be flexible by:

1. Stepping back with short term losses in exchange for huge gains later
2. Making sure stepping back is the right move
3. Preparing A “Parachute” before stepping back
4. Rethinking your Matrix (What you measure)
   “A disruptive innovation must measure different attributes of performance than those in your current value networks,”

Chapter 6: Giving Failures Its Due

Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.
— Auguste Rodin

What Is This Chapter About?
In order to disrupt yourself, you have to embrace failures by:

1. Learning to fail
2. Recognizing that it’s not a matter of if but when
   “Failure is something that people see happening and see discussed, so is no longer feared. But instead, it’s seen as an opportunity to learn something and improve.”
3. Redefining success
   “Success is not about being the first but being the first in the team because no one is filling that needed role”
4. Acknowledging and sharing sadness
   “It has been said by a number of psychologists who study recovery from trauma that mourning without empathy leads to madness. The person who suffers loss must be able to give testimony to someone as a way of working through and learning from this loss.”
5. Dropping shame
   “I am not what I have done, I am what I have overcome”
6. Learning from it
   “What valuable truth did you discover about your present and future prospects by failing?”
   “It’s not about learning the lesson; it’s about learning the right lesson so we can have end-game success. Keep that in mind.
7. Knowing when It’s okay to quit
   “Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time.”
   “If you are pursuing a goal that is constantly frustrating, you will be less successful in goal attainment in other areas of life.”
8. Asking yourself WHY 5 times to get to the root issue of your hesitation
   “I have enough money to quit, but I don’t.”
   Why #1? “I don’t know what I would do next.”
   Why #2? “I don’t know what I like to do.”
   Why #3? “I am always working.”
   Why #4? “Working is what I know how to do.”
   Why #5? “My job is my identity.”

Chapter 7: Be Driven By Discovery

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
— Arthur C. Clarke

What Is This Chapter About?
In order to disrupt yourself, you have to be in discovery mode by:

1. Letting go of conventional planning
   You can’t disrupt by planning from what you already know.
2. Getting on Discovery-Driven planning
   1. Create a reverse income statement to calculate baseline line of happiness to pursue the disruption
   2. Calculate the cost of disruption you can incur or afford
   3. Since this journey is new, write down all the assumptions you have (eg. I assume if I market to 1000 at $1000 each, 20% will buy and make me $20,000)
   4. Prepare a milestone chart to specify assumptions to be tested and what you’re going to learn at each milestone
3. Getting on Discovery-Driven career
4. Embracing that you might not end up where you initially intended’
5. Finding your true north (Your deep why)