Rethinking How We Measure
Companies on Social and
Environmental Impact
Nicholas Andreou and Marya Besharov
A new framework offers a broader, more effective approach to assessing
both the internal and external aspects of a company’s social and
sustainability performance.
The COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the
ongoing climate crisis have put a spotlight on the central
role businesses can play in tackling global challenges. We
need companies to step up and help solve social and
environmental problems at scale — for the sake of the
economy as well as people and the planet.
Yet one of the incentives companies have for being more
socially and environmentally active — shareholder influence
— is limited by existing approaches for assessing a
company’s social and environmental performance. The
predominant frameworks are too narrow and fail to fully
address key stakeholder concerns on their own.
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) assessments
focus on internal operational matters, such as labor relations
and supply chain sustainability, but don’t fully consider the
impact that a company’s products or services can have on
outside stakeholders. Impact investing, in contrast, focuses
on external issues, such as whether products and services
address the needs of the poor, but it overlooks internal
considerations, such as how companies treat their
employees.
In reality, a company’s social and environmental impact is
multifaceted. Consider Tesla, which builds electric vehicles
that signifcantly reduce emissions across their life cycles but
faces questions about its labor practices. From an impactinvesting perspective, the company might achieve high
marks, but it rates lower from an ESG standpoint, with
neither framework capturing the whole picture. As a result,
frustration with both approaches is mounting: Tesla’s recent
removal from the S&P 500 ESG Index prompted CEO Elon
Musk to describe ESG ratings as “an outrageous scam,” while
criticism of impact investing has pushed some large asset
managers to tone down the language of their impact funds
and rebrand them.
It’s time for an integrated framework for assessing impact —
one that accounts for both the external and internal facets
of a company’s social and environmental performance. Only
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then can managers and investors provide accurate
evaluations and influence companies to tackle complex
global challenges.
An Integrated Approach to
Impact
Drawing on several decades of collective experience leading
and researching socially and environmentally sustainable
businesses, we offer a holistic approach to assessing and
benchmarking companies’ impact performance, based on
four different levers a company can pull to effect social and
environmental changes. While each lever is distinct, the real
value comes from considering all four together. By capturing
the full range of ways that a company can have impact, our
framework will help direct capital flows toward sustainable
businesses.
To develop this comprehensive framework, we started with
a shared understanding of what impact truly means. The
Impact Management Project (IMP) frames impact as “a
change in an outcome caused by an organization. An impact
can be positive or negative, intended or unintended.”
Managing impact requires identifying the positive and
negative effects on people and the planet to increase
positives and reduce negatives. For companies, it is only
when initiatives translate into improved outcomes for
people’s lives or the planet’s health that they create impact.
Which kinds of outcomes should qualify? The United
Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals offer a
comprehensive list that can be used as a guide; the goals
include good health and well-being, quality education,
gender equality, clean water and sanitation, affordable and
clean energy, and decent work and economic growth.
We then considered the different levers that businesses can
use to create impact across these areas. Our work has
identifed four critical levers: (1) the products and services
a company develops or sells, (2) the customer segments it
targets, (3) changes in operations, and (4) how profts are
used.
Below, we explain these four areas of impact, highlight links
to the legacy concepts of ESG and impact investing, and
identify existing tools for assessing a company’s performance
along each one.
Create products and services that deliver positive social or
environmental value. This lever focuses on the extent to
which a company’s core products and services improve
people’s lives or the planet’s health. It can be the most
powerful lever, particularly if a company reaches signifcant
scale, as improvements can then reach billions of people
worldwide.
Headspace Health, the company behind the popular
meditation app, has always been centered around helping
people develop mindfulness and improve their well-being.
Tesla has used this lever by focusing on electric vehicles
designed to have a lower environmental footprint than
internal combustion engine vehicles. In each case, scaling up
to reach more customers not only increases revenues for the
company; it also dramatically improves outcomes for people
and the planet.
Improve the affordability and accessibility of products and
services to reach marginalized populations. Here, the focus
is on the degree to which a company makes its products
and services affordable and accessible to those most in need.
Consider the examples of Lemonade, which provides lowcost insurance products in the U.S. and some European
countries, and Grameen Bank, a microfnance organization
that offers fnancial services to the world’s poorest
populations.
These frst two levers draw inspiration from impact
investing’s external focus in measuring company impact.
Assessment tools developed for impact investors, such as
IMP’s general dimensions of impact or Omidyar Network’s
more specialized Ethical Explorer Pack, can be used to
measure a company’s performance on both levers. Big
Society Capital, for example, uses IMP tools to assess
impact-driven startups.
Embed social and environmental considerations into a
company’s operations. This lever is about how a company
delivers its products and services, and the effect it has on
people and the planet through those choices. As such, it is
most closely aligned with existing ESG and sustainability
approaches, including the Global Reporting Initiative, the
OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, and the
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ISO 26000 standard for social responsibility.
Companies focusing on this lever include Unilever, which
embeds sustainability principles and practices across the
design of the entire value chain, and Apple, which prioritizes
customer privacy in its product designs.
Use profts to support social or environmental value
creation. Companies bring positive impact by directing
profts or cash reserves to beneft people and the planet
through philanthropy, cross-subsidization, or cash
investments. For example, Innocent Drinks donates 10% of
its profts to charities, while Danone uses profts from its
traditional, well-established brands to subsidize its
nutrition-fortifed yogurt, enabling it to reach low-income
customers.
This lever is most closely aligned with existing corporate
social responsibility (CSR) and corporate philanthropy
approaches. Several CSR tools can be used to assess
performance in this area, including The Carbon Bankroll,
which estimates the carbon footprint of major companies’
cash investments; CSRHub, which provides CSR ratings and
information; and records of corporate giving, such as those
tracked by The Chronicle of Philanthropy.
Implementing the Framework
Patagonia’s recent decision to place company governance in
the hands of a trust dedicated to preserving its purpose and
to give all profts to a climate action charity is a striking
example of a company achieving impact across all four
levers. But unfortunately, it’s all too rare. Most companies
focus on just one or two areas, overlooking opportunities for
positive growth.
Implementing all four levers in the framework is
challenging, but it can be done. It requires organizations to
assess the quality and quantity of impact across each lever;
the balance of positive and negative impacts, as well as
intentional and unintentional impacts; and the materiality
for people and the planet, not just shareholders. Companies
assessing themselves can use the following key questions as
a guide:
1. What is the quality of the impact, and how much impact
does each lever create? Clearly, more is better, but how much
is enough? How can companies and investors benchmark
across peer organizations? IMP’s ABC framework offers a
useful starting point by distinguishing between efforts that
avoid harm, those that beneft particular stakeholder groups,
and those that contribute solutions to broader social and
environmental problems such as climate change.
2. Are both positive and negative impacts accounted for?
No company will have solely positive impacts. Corporate
leaders, as well as investors, need to take negative as well
as positive impacts into account to arrive at a net impact
assessment.
3. Is double materiality considered? ESG analysis currently
focuses on factors that are material to investors — an
approach referred to as single materiality. Double
materiality is when that analysis also considers businessrelated factors that are material to society and the
environment. From an impact perspective, the rationale for
double materiality is clear, but the business community has
so far resisted embracing this approach. As markets are
increasingly affected by social and environmental factors,
however, we anticipate that investors will increasingly take
double materiality into account, and thus, so will companies.
4. Does the assessment include unintentional as well as
intentional impacts? The history of social policy,
international development, and the third sector is littered
with examples of unintended consequences arising from
well-intentioned actions. Insecticide-treated malaria nets
inadvertently polluted the ocean when repurposed as fshing
tools, for instance, and some crime prevention programs
actually increased people’s likelihood of offending.
Businesses entering the arena of creating social and
environmental good need to be mindful of the complexities
involved in effecting change. Through robust impact
analysis, they should consider the degree to which they are
accounting for potential unintended consequences and
taking steps to mitigate the associated risks.
Adopting an integrative framework for impact is critical for
moving away from assessments that aren’t working in their
current form, but it’s only the frst step. To move forward,
companies and stakeholders alike will need to work their
way through all four levers of impact in the framework.
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Founders and management teams need to consider these
levers if they want to optimize their business for social and
environmental impact, and socially minded and
environmentally conscious employees should use them
when choosing where to devote their careers. Ratings
agencies need to provide data against these levers so that
stakeholders can make informed decisions, and investors
will need to broaden their scope to include all these levers
when choosing where to deploy capital. Together, these
changes will help all of us to realize business’s potential to
address the world’s most pressing problems.
About the Authors
Nicholas Andreou is founder of Impact Edge Consulting and
a visiting fellow at the University of Oxford’s Skoll Centre
for Social Entrepreneurship at Saïd Business School. Marya
Besharov is professor of organizations and impact and
academic director at the Skoll Centre.
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Reproduced with permission of copyright owner. Further reproduction
prohibited without permission.
Innovation
Create new markets for growth without
INNOVATION
AUTHORS
W. Chan Kim
Professor,
INSEAD
Renée
Mauborgne
Professor,
INSEAD
72 Harvard Business Review May–June 2023
Have to Be Doesn’t Disruptive
destroying existing companies or jobs.
PHOTOGRAPHER CLAIRE DROPPERT
i
Harvard Business Review
May–June 2023  73
Body
THE SOLUTION
Nondisruptive creation occurs outside
the boundaries of
existing industries,
giving rise to markets
where none existed
before. Thus it fosters
economic growth
without incurring
social costs, enabling
business and society
to thrive together.
IDEA IN BRIEF
THE PROBLEM
Innovation driven by
disruption generates
a new market and
growth, but often with
terrible social costs:
the destruction of
existing companies
and jobs and damage
to communities.
THE EXPLANATION
Most innovators have
taken for granted
that the surest path
to growth is creating
a new market by destroying the existing
one. That overlooks an
alternative approach
to innovation that
doesn’t disrupt the
existing industry.
international travel began in the mid-19th century, with the golden age of transatlantic oceangoing. The British company Cunard, a leader in the industry, transported millions of immigrants
from Europe to the United States around the turn of the 20th century. By the end of World War II
it had emerged as the largest Atlantic passenger line, operating 12 ships to the United States and
Canada as it captured the flourishing North Atlantic travel market in the frst postwar decade.
That golden age came to an end with the advent of commercial jet flights. Whereas one million
passengers crossed the Atlantic by boat in 1957, air travel caused that fgure to fall to 650,000 by
1965, with roughly six people flying for each passenger going by sea. Ocean liners simply could
not match the speed and convenience of jet planes.
But while other oceangoing companies were destroyed by the advent of the jet age, Cunard
innovated “luxury vacationing at sea” and opened up the modern cruise industry. Until then
The era of
ABOUT THE ART
Claire Droppert’s Sand Creatures
explores scenes of powdery sand
exploding in the air and seemingly
manifesting as new life forms.
74 Harvard Business Review May–June 2023
INNOVATION
Corporate leaders have continually been told that the only way to innovate
and grow is to disrupt their industries or even their own companies.
ocean liners, like airplanes, had been viewed principally as
a mode of transportation from point A to point B. Cunard
changed that by making them platforms for recreation and
star-studded entertainment.
Today Cunard is part of Carnival Corporation, and the
cruise tourism industry it pioneered some 60 years ago
generates revenues of about $30 billion annually and has
created more than a million jobs. The creation of the cruise
industry was clearly not incremental. Nor was it disruptive—
the catchword that has come to dominate the innovation
space. On the contrary, cruise tourism did not invade,
destroy, or displace any existing market or industry. It was
created without disruption.
AN ALTERNATIVE PATH TO INNOVATION AND GROWTH
For the past 20 years “disruption” has been a leading battle
cry in business: Disrupt this. Disrupt that. Disrupt or die.
Whether it comes from the low end—the basis of Clay
Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation—or from
the high end, the way commercial jet travel overtook ocean
liners and Apple’s iPhone dominated mobile phones, corporate leaders have continually been told that the only way to
innovate and grow is to disrupt their industries or even their
own companies. Not surprisingly, many have come to see
“disruption” as a near-synonym for “innovation.”
But the obsession with disruption obscures an important
truth: Market-creating innovation isn’t always disruptive.
Disruption may be what people talk about. It’s certainly
important, and it’s all around us. But as our research and the
case of Cunard reveal, it’s only one end of what we think of as
the spectrum of market-creating innovation. On the other end
is what we have come to call nondisruptive creation, through
which new industries, new jobs, and proftable growth come
into being without destroying existing companies or jobs.
Under disruption and its conceptual antecedent,
Joseph Schumpeter’s “creative destruction,” market creation is inextricably linked to destruction or displacement.
But nondisruptive creation breaks that link. It reveals an
immense potential to establish markets where none existed
before and, in doing so, to foster economic growth in a way
that enables business and society to thrive together. In
this article we will show how nondisruptive creation can
complement disruption by offering an alternative path to
market-creating innovation. We’ll begin with the signifcant
impact it can have on growth, jobs, and society.
THREE IDEAS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD
Today most women in developed countries take sanitary
napkins for granted, but that one innovation created a
nondisruptive new market that has radically improved the
lives of half the world’s population. Every month women use
them to deal with the inconvenience (and messiness) of their
menstrual cycles. But that wasn’t always the case. Before the
advent of sanitary napkins, women used pieces of old cloth
or even sheep’s wool, which were often dirty and could cause
infection. They were uncomfortable, shifted when worn,
and failed to prevent visible spotting and leakage. To avoid
the embarrassment this caused, girls frequently stayed away
from school for several days during their monthly cycles.
Sanitary napkins took much of the stigma and dread out
of menstruation: Girls could go to school and play sports
without worry, and women could more easily work. Today
the sanitary-napkin industry generates revenues of more
than $22 billion a year.
Consider microfnance, an innovation that has transformed the lives of many of the world’s poorest people by
making fnancial services available to those who subsist on
less than a few dollars a day. Before the advent of microfnance, no bank or other fnancial institution was prepared
to serve them, deeming them unsuitable as borrowers. By
fnding a way around that problem, Muhammad Yunus, the
founder of Grameen Bank, enabled people who had previously been denied access to capital to create new microbusinesses, jobs, higher standards of living, and hope. Microfnance has become a multibillion-dollar industry with a
staggering 98% loan-repayment rate and plenty of room
for future growth.
Now consider the television program Sesame Street, which
teaches preschool children how to count, name colors and
shapes, and recognize the letters of the alphabet. The best part
is that kids have so much fun watching it, with its lovable Muppets and songs, that they don’t even realize how much they’re
learning. Sesame Street did not displace preschools, libraries,
or even parents who were reading bedtime stories to their
Harvard Business Review
May–June 2023  75

76 Harvard Business Review May–June 2023
incumbent players. Amazon didn’t merely displace Borders’
1,200 stores, along with countless independent booksellers,
and take a huge chunk out of Barnes & Noble’s sales. It is
now doing the same to Main Street retailers and department
stores in the United States and other countries it operates in.
Although the disrupter is hailed as a winner in the press,
and purchasers and investors flock to it, this win-lose
approach triggers the third commonality: painful adjustment costs for society, often hidden by the euphoria and
glamour that surround disruption. For example, in New York
City, Uber’s largest U.S. market, the company has had a huge
impact on taxi drivers and medallion owners who bought the
right to operate a taxi in the city. Long seen as a retirement
ticket, taxi medallions have plunged in value from more
than $1 million to as little as $175,000 since the appearance
of Uber and other ride-hailing services, and taxi drivers’
earnings have nosedived by as much as 40%. Many drivers
must now work double shifts just to survive. Bankruptcies,
foreclosures, evictions, and even suicides have resulted.
Such negative aftershocks are felt worldwide in major cities
that Uber and similar services have entered. The same
disruptive force that has enriched consumers with its leap
in value has hurt others in the process. The human costs
of Amazon’s disruption are even more pronounced: Retail
jobs may not be glamorous, but they provide a livelihood for
millions of people. And the visual effect of boarded-up stores
wears on people’s psyches and tarnishes a community.
In theory, disruption should generate higher growth and
new jobs, but painful adjustment costs exist in the short run.
For example, Amazon’s disruption of booksellers and retail
has led to as many as 900,000 jobs lost and huge existingasset obsolescence. And although Amazon’s workforce had
climbed from 200,000 to 800,000 when Covid hit, and its
net positive impact on jobs and growth has increased since,
the jobs it is creating are not necessarily located where the
old jobs were lost and may not rest on the same skills and
knowledge as those of the workers let go. People who were
laid off may still be reeling, especially if they’re in rural
communities where local jobs were scarce to begin with.
Even though, at the macro level, disruption yields aggregate long-run growth, the ensuing adjustment costs often
trigger a backlash from social interest groups, government
agencies, and nonproft associations seeking to minimize
Nondisruptive creation is applicable across geographic areas, from developed markets
to bottom-of-the-pyramid markets, and at all levels of socioeconomic standing.
After the publication of our
books Blue Ocean Strategy
and Blue Ocean Shift, a
question repeatedly popped
up from business leaders,
academics, and consultants working in the feld
of innovation: How does
blue ocean strategy differ
from creative destruction,
disruption, or disruptive
innovation?
To address that question, we reexamined our
blue ocean data from the
innovation angle and found
that although a few cases,
such as Novo Nordisk’s
insulin pen, largely displaced
the existing offerings in their
own industries, most blue
oceans in our data were
created not within existing
industry boundaries but
across them. Cirque du
Soleil, for instance, created
a new market space across
the existing boundaries of
circus and theater. Although
it pulled some market share
from both, generating a measure of disruption, it did not
signifcantly displace either.
However, our examination
also revealed something
else that greatly intrigued
us. Among the cases that
had been added to our original database over time, a
few had trigered no disruption or displacement. That
piqued our curiosity. Did
those cases represent a few
unconnected anomalies, or
were they examples of a new
kind of innovation? If the latter, why had it been largely
overlooked in the literature
on innovation and growth?
What were its implications
for business and society,
now and in the future? And
was there a process or an
approach by which we could
realize this new kind of innovation in a systematic way?
To answer those questions
we collected historical and
current cases of nondisruptive creation across the forproft, nonproft, and public
sectors and built a database
on nondisruptive creation
and the managerial actions
involved in it.
Our research showed that
nondisruptive creation is
distinct from both disruption
and blue ocean strategy,
with a correspondingly
distinct impact on growth.
Whereas disruption generates new markets within
existing industry boundaries, resulting in a high level
of disruptive growth, and
blue ocean strategy creates
new markets across existing
industry boundaries, producing a mix of disruptive
and nondisruptive growth,
nondisruptive creation generates new markets outside
existing industry boundaries
and yields mostly nondisruptive growth. Our book
Beyond Disruption details
our journey and offers the
answers we found to the
questions we asked.
From Blue Ocean Strategy
to Nondisruptive Creation
Harvard Business Review
May–June 2023  77
the carnage. (Of course, if an industry has a pronounced negative effect on the environment or the well-being of people,
the trade-off may be small relative to the overall beneft to
society of disrupting and displacing that industry.)
Adjustment costs are where nondisruptive creation
breaks from disruption. By effectively disentangling market
creation from market destruction, it allows organizations to
grow with little asset obsolescence and social pain. All else
being equal, it can be seen as a positive-sum approach to
innovation—a much-needed complement to disruption as
a pathway to growth. (See the exhibit “Disruption vs. Nondisruptive Creation.”) Let’s explore that idea.
TOWARD A POSITIVE-SUM OUTCOME
Like disruption, nondisruptive creation delivers compelling
value for buyers, whether they are consumers or businesses.
That’s why we purchase or use the product or service, and
the new market materializes. Without exceptional value, the
new market will not take off. In contrast to disruption, however, nondisruptive creation produces no evident losers and
only minimal painful adjustment costs. From the start
it has a positive impact on growth and jobs.
Kickstarter, for example, saw that literally thousands of
people had wildly imaginative projects they dreamed of creating but lacked the capital to pursue. Because most artists are
aiming frst and foremost to realize a vision, not to generate
ROI, it should come as no surprise that Kickstarter’s online
crowdfunding platform didn’t eat into the existing fnance
industry or displace even a tiny share of existing equity investors’ or venture capitalists’ profts, growth, or investment
opportunities. And because backers receive no monetary
incentives on Kickstarter—only cool merchandise or other
recognition, such as a shout-out on the creative’s website—
a new set of investors emerged: people who care about creative work and want to help others realize their dreams.
Hailed after its launch as one of Time magazine’s 50 best
inventions of the year, Kickstarter succeeded while creating
few if any losers. Within three years of its advent it became
proftable, and in its frst decade it raised a staggering
$4.3 billion for projects supported on its platform, funding
more than 160,000 ideas that might have gone unrealized
78 Harvard Business Review May–June 2023

→ Generates growth
through the displacement and expansion
of existing market
space
LEVEL DISRUPTION
→ Generates
growth through
the creation of
new market space
beyond existing
industries
NONDISRUPTIVE
CREATION
MICRO
→ Incurs social adjustment costs from
shuttered organizations, lost jobs, and
hurt communities
→ Short-term growth
comes with social
pain, although the net
gain in growth over
time is positive
→ Incurs no
evident social
adjustment costs
because there is
no displacement
→ The gains in
economic growth
and employment
are positive from
the start, with no
social pain
MACRO MESO
→ Produces a
win-lose outcome
Winners: the disrupter and consumers
Losers: disrupted
organizations and
their employees
→ Produces a positive-sum outcome
Winners: the nondisruptive creator
and consumers
Losers: none
evident
Harvard Business Review
May–June 2023  79

80 Harvard Business Review May–June 2023
pressure for clean, low-carbon energy created a new
push in China for green sources of energy, especially in
the eastern and central regions, where industrial activity
was concentrated and power demand was rising. Those
regions are densely populated, with rural land reserved
for agricultural use, leaving scant space for green-energy
production facilities.
Seeing this emerging need, the Tongwei Group set out
to create a brand-new, nondisruptive market by leveraging
its business, which serviced millions of acres of fsh-farm
waters in eastern and central China. Although aquaculture
was already an important source of revenue for individual
farmers and local governments, Tongwei determined that
the economic value of those water resources could be multiplied by using the water’s unutilized surface to produce
green energy.
So the company created a nondisruptive, fsheryintegrated, photovoltaic industry, which essentially combined an innovative cage-type aquacultural system that it
had developed with a water-based photovoltaic system. Solar
panels set above the water had the effect of lowering water
temperatures and reducing photosynthesis and algal growth,
which boosted the output of the fsh farms. Meanwhile, Tongwei generated electricity with the solar panels. The results
of this nondisruptive creation were higher incomes for fsh
farmers, a new source of green energy for the regions, more
tax revenues for local governments, and a highly proftable
new business for Tongwei. Tongwei’s new market disrupts
no one and is expanding rapidly across China.
Consider another nondisruptive market: e-sports. Youths
had a fast-growing interest in watching skillful professionals
play online video games, whether or not they were gamers
themselves. In response, video-game makers and third-party
e-sports organizers created professional in-person tournaments in which the most skilled players could compete in
spectacular global events, held in massive arenas, with as
many as 50,000 people in attendance and the players’ moves
projected on panoramic screens. They entered into lucrative
agreements to broadcast the events live around the world,
with up to 100 million fans watching. In this way e-sports
was crafted into a spectator sport distinct from gaming itself.
Today the industry pulls in more than $1 billion in revenue
and has some 175 million fans worldwide. Its creation and
growth have not displaced any existing gaming or other
sports industries.
The relevant questions are: What taken-for-granted
problems that no industry exists to solve do you or your
company observe or directly experience? What newly emerging issues are you or your organization encountering that
have no industry addressing them and could create a real
opportunity for you, your business, or the world? Are you
actively scouting brand-new problems to solve and brandnew opportunities for creation? Do you have a mechanism,
a process, or tools for doing so effectively?
AS WE SEEK to address the many challenges facing our planet
and humanity, we will need innovative market-creating solutions. If they can be nondisruptive rather than disruptive, we
believe, they will help bridge the gap between business and
society, bringing people together rather than dividing them.
Much of business is about aggression and fear: beating
the competition, stealing market share, disrupting or being
disrupted. Most of us dislike those emotions and behaviors
because they fll us with anxiety, making us feel we are under
threat and may be marginalized or destroyed if we don’t
strike frst. It’s a scarcity-based view of the world. What if we
could shift from fear to hope, from a mindset of scarcity to
one of abundance? The idea that we can create new markets
and grow without disrupting others suggests that business
does not have to be a destructive, fear-based, win-lose game.
To be sure, fear can be effective. “Disrupt or die” is a
strong motivator for an organization to act. But the hope of
making a positive-sum contribution to business and society
is equally strong. That’s why it’s important to understand
and act on both ends of the spectrum of market-creating
innovation, and why nondisruptive creation is an essential
complement to disruption. Each has a role to play in building a compelling future. HBR Reprint R2303D
W. CHAN KIM and RENÉE MAUBORGNE are professors
of strategy at INSEAD and codirectors of the INSEAD
Blue Ocean Strategy Institute, in Fontainebleau, France.
They are the authors of Beyond Disruption: Innovate
and Achieve Growth Without Displacing Industries,
Companies, or Jobs (Harvard Business Review Press, 2023), from
which this article is adapted.
The idea that we can create new markets and grow without disrupting others suggests
that business does not have to be a destructive, fear-based, win-lose game.
Harvard Business Review
May–June 2023  81
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