| "I'm continuing to think about disruptive innovation — how it affects business, even here at CA, and how it can be applied to make the world better for a great many people." |  |
Thought Leadership/Tom Sadtler: Thinking Big by Thinking Small
Applying the lessons of business to social change is not relegated to think tanks alone. Great thinkers are often those whose passions are given the chance to thrive within companies every day.
For Tom Sadtler, VP Marketing, CA Technology Services™, social change has been a lifelong pursuit, whether he's served on the board of a company focused on low-income housing or an organization in Bogota, Colombia, providing "emotional intelligence" training in reconciliation and forgiveness. It's no wonder, then, that when the business concept of disruptive innovation emerged in the '90s, he began to consider how it could be leveraged to advance social progress.
Disruptive — or catalytic — innovation is any new business or technology model that fundamentally reshapes a marketplace (think no-frills airlines or the Apple iPod*). To Sadtler and Clay Christensen, who coined the concept and the term, such innovation can not only drive big changes in business — it can revolutionize the way governments, NGOs and entrepreneurs address social needs. In the December issue of The Harvard Business Review, the coauthors lay out the case that many traditional solutions fail because they are both too complex and too narrowly focused. Far greater impact might be achieved by radically shifting the paradigm — by delivering simple solutions to large numbers of people that are scalable, easy to replicate, and overlooked by mainstream philanthropies.
Among the many examples cited by the authors is the KickStart MoneyMaker, a simple foot-powered agricultural pump now used in Africa. While it would have little use on an industrialized farm, it has huge applications in an agricultural economy that is built on tiny, hand-cultivated and hand-irrigated plots. At the time of publication, the MoneyMaker had already increased productivity for thousands of farmers — while creating 29,000 new jobs in manufacturing, distribution and product retail.
The article by Sadtler, Christensen, and their two coauthors has gained attention from both business schools and the social services sector. Meantime, says Sadtler, "I'm continuing to think about disruptive innovation — how it affects business, even here at CA, and how it can be applied to make the world better for a great many people."
While Sadtler admits that his expertise on this particular subject may be unique, he says that thought leadership is hardly a rare commodity at CA. "This is a big company with a lot of smart people who are used to thinking outside the box. If you scratch the surface, you'll find that any one of them is fired up about something."
*iPod is a registered trademark of Apple Inc.
Content posted on: 16 July 2007
