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#119 - I Was Wrong? Don't Disrupt
William Gibson famously observed. The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed.
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This is Andy. Welcome back to the Sprinkler Nerd Show. This is episode one 19 and it's gonna be a kind of brief episode, but I'm actually excited to share what I've been thinking about the last couple days because I think I may have been wrong about something. Well, Maybe not wrong. I, I just may have changed my mind on something again based on new information.
So if you've been listening to this podcast, you know that I love to question what I think I know and I love to hear. Maybe not other opinions, let's say. Well, sure you could say other opinions, but I love to look at different angles on things. And I want you to, if you haven't listened to episode 90, I want you to lip listen to episode 90 because it's about, My thoughts on becoming a pioneer and in episode 90 I talked about how I used to think that being a pioneer was the goal as an entrepreneur.
The goal of an entrepreneur is to pioneer new territory, right? Go out there and pioneer something. And I heard a quote from Howard Schultz, who's the former, well, he may still be the ceo, the founder of Starbucks. And I talked about how Howard said he would not choose to be a pioneer. He would rather disrupt something.
And I'm gonna play that quote for you. And my thoughts are back in episode 90. So take a listen to episode 90 and I will play the quote from Howard here in just a moment. But earlier this week I heard. A quote on the very same topic that totally contradict or countered what Howard Schultz was talking about.
And uh, this person, Jim McKelvey, who was the, he co-founded Square. Uh, which I'm sure you guys know about, it's the card, you know, the little card swiper that, uh, can attach to a smartphone. He co-founded Square with Jack Dorsey, I don't know, way back in like 2006, and he wrote this book called The Innovation Stack.
And if you are, Well, I, I'd say anybody would enjoy this book, but particularly if you are an entrepreneur and you were building a company, could be a service company, contracting company, could be software company. It could be product company. Really any company. This book, the innovation stack is phenomenal and.
Jim McKelvey count contradicts what Howard was talking about, and Jim says that you don't ever disrupt, you don't want to disrupt the market. And so what I wanted to do today was play both of these quotes and kind of share that. I think I might have been wrong, or I'm still not sure, or maybe it depends.
Maybe you could pioneer something, maybe you could disrupt something. Maybe there's another variable at play that makes both of these people right. So the first thing I want to do right now is play the quote from Howard Schultz on why you should not be a pioneer and instead be a disruptor. There's always this question about what's the best road to take?
Uh, should I disrupt the category? Or should I create a new one? I would say on balance. I generally don't want to be in the pioneering business. And by that I mean it's so hard to change consumer behavior. It takes a long time, a lot of resources. And unless you have the most compelling story, idea and form factor and platform, uh, and I think.
Are willing to run the long race of losing money, which is fine. Uh, I think the easier route is to disrupt a category that already exists. Uh, but there's an opportunity cuz the large companies feel as if they're entitled to it. And I love that opportunity. Where the entrepreneur can be disruptive, much more innovative than anyone els
Published on 1 year, 8 months ago