The New Yorker has a great profile on Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo’s creative visionary and “the father of modern video games.” For those who don’t recognize the name, Miyamoto is the creator of the original Super Mario Bros., the best-selling video game in the world. That is, until it was surpassed two years ago by another Miyamoto inspiration––Wii Sports. “Revolution” was the internal code name for the Wii, the first wireless motion-capture gaming console. He rarely gives interviews, which is why Nick Paumgarten, the article’s author says, “securing an audience with Miyamoto in Japan is a little like trying to rescue Princess Toadstool.”
From a disruptive thinking viewpoint, there are three important themes we can draw from the article:
1. Creative Connections
Inspiration for break-through ideas often happens in the periphery, in analogous but not necessarily related categories. Miyamoto’s experience with his family’s sheepdog sparked the idea for a game in which the player looks after a simulated pet. The idea for Pikmin, “a game featuring tiny creatures that have stalks protruding from their heads,” came to him while gardening. In Disrupt, I describe how Miyamoto’s insight for the Wii game controller came from the accelerometer chip that regulates the airbag in his car.
2. Creative Constraints
Disruptive thinkers thrive on unexpected constraints; they help them break away from cliché-thinking and look for alternative ideas. When Miyamoto first imagined the game Donkey Kong, “he had a scenario based on Popeye in mind, but Nintendo was unable to secure the rights, so he invented a new set of characters.” And Mario, perhaps the most recognizable game character in the world, got his famous mustache and red hat to “hide the fact that the engineers couldn’t yet do mouths or hair that moved.”
3. Creative Destruction
Since 1977, Miyamoto has been at the forefront of three paradigm shifts: the side-scrolling game (think Donkey Kong); the free-roaming 3-D game (think Legend of Zelda); and the motion-capture game (think Wii Sports). Radical change, in any business or industry, requires creative destruction, the need to fundamentally challenge the validity of your biggest achievements. This appears to have been Miyamoto’s goal from the start: “When I started working for the company… I wanted to destroy the styles that we ourselves had created.”
The key takeaway: disruptive innovation requires bold moves, even at the peak of your success.
In a business world of nonstop change, there's only one way to win the game: transform it entirely. This requires a revolution in thinking—a steady stream of disruptive strategies and unexpected solutions. In Disrupt, Luke Williams shows exactly how to generate those strategies and deliver those solutions.
Williams shows how to combine fluid creativity with analytical rigor in a simple, complete, five-stage process for successfully disrupting any market. Using many examples and a case study, you'll walk through every step of transforming disruptive ideas from conception to breakthrough business strategy.
Video courtesy of L2 and FORA.tv
“Disrupt is a simple yet incredibly powerful thought process which can help turn your business upside-down in seconds. Are you prepared to DISRUPT your business?”
“If you need to drive disruptive innovation in your own organization—and you do—Luke Williams is the guide you've been looking for. Buy this book. Use it. Make a difference.”
“Luke Williams has a powerful message for companies today: Don’t wait for a couple guys in a garage to come up with an idea that will upend your business.”
“By artfully smashing ideas together—from Schumpeter to Tarantino, business to design—Luke Williams upends the ordinary, providing the reader with a motivational and pragmatic blueprint for innovative thinking.”
“Remember the old Apple tagline, urging us all to ‘Think Different?’ In this book, Luke Williams shows us how to do precisely that. Disrupt helps you look at business—and the world around you—through a fresh lens, one that turns assumptions and convention upside down.”
Luke Williams is a leading speaker, educator, and consultant on innovation strategy. He has worked internationally with industry leaders like American Express, GE, Sony, Crocs, Virgin, Disney, and Hewlett-Packard, to develop new products, services, and brands. Williams is a Fellow at frog, one of the world's most influential innovation companies, and Adjunct Professor of Innovation at NYU Stern School of Business.
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