James Bidwell - Disrupt!: 100 Lessons in Business Innovation

In a world where innovation is both accelerating and ever more highly valued, understanding how different our future will be is vital for all leaders. Disrupt! compiles 100 ideas which illustrate this challenge the question is: how will they change your world?

Sir Ian Cheshire

If you know anybody that needs a deep breath of the cleanest air of the imagination, give them this book, because in these pages one will come across and savour the distilled genius of a generation of entrepreneurial thinkers and doers. Breathe deep, hold on to who you are, set your moral compass and fly. This book is a gift to everyone with a desire to enter a world where extraordinary things happen, and a roadmap by which to navigate it.

Sir Tim Smit, Co-Founder, The Eden Project

As a CEO, three things should keep you awake at night. Do I have the right people in my team? Is my business cost competitive? And, most importantly, are we still relevant for the consumer?

Disruption is about finding new ways to stay relevant, and every human enterprise aspires to it. However, I have learned one thing about disruption: you cannot plan for it but you need to organize for it.

Disrupt! is a great way to get organized. You will access in this book ideas and concepts that you may be able to apply directly or by association to your own enterprise. Disruption may be everywhere but it is actually quite hard to locate. I believe you can find it here.

Pierre Laubies, Chief Executive Officer, Jacobs Douwe Egberts

This book is a selection of clever ideas from entrepreneurs around the world. Each is a new way to solve a problem. This is the way society advances, wealth is created and jobs are generated. It all spells out: seize the day!

Luke Johnson, entrepreneur and author

Remembering the foundation of my own business, a thought remains strongly anchored: that of feeling isolated; of being misunderstood and clinging at night to dreams so as not to lose sight of them in the morning. I subscribe to the Springwise platform because it builds my desire to share in the innovation of emerging entrepreneurs ideas. I often think that if it had existed much earlier I would have felt much less alone.

Olivier Baussan, Founder, LOccitane en Provence

In an ever-changing world where decisions are being made which cant be predicted, we need more innovators to think about the world and business in different ways. Disrupt! is a fantastic resource of inspiration to stimulate new thoughts by highlighting amazing innovations and innovators from across the world who possess the creativity, resilience, entrepreneurial and interdisciplinary thinking that our 21st century society and economy is crying out for.

Dr Kirsten Cater, Academic Director of the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, University of Bristol

If you are even remotely curious about the future, mildly interested in how we sustain a healthy planet, pleasantly bemused by unexpected fixes to problems you havent yet realized, or slightly piqued by new approaches to the ordinary, Disrupt! is a book that will intrigue and delight. Featuring a hand-picked compendium of the top innovations in categories ranging from sustainability, to retail, to the sharing economy, the book not only highlights these selections on their own fascinating merits, but also advances the critical viewpoint that it is the web of these innovations that will shape our future. Bidwells thoughtful introduction situates todays innovations in the context of historical change, and provides a balanced framework for considering both the gains and potential losses as we innovate our future.

Kate Williams, CEO, 1% for the Planet

Published in Great Britain in 2017 by Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
An imprint of John Murray Press.
Published in the USA in 2017 by Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
An Hachette company.

Copyright Springwise Intelligence LTD 2017

The right of Springwise Intelligence LTD to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by it in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017948850

ISBN 9781473674097

Nicholas Brealey Publishing
53 State Street
Boston, MA 02109

www.nicholasbrealey.com

To Lili, Willow and Sage, inspiration for all my endeavours in life.

To Sophie, my muse and constant source of encouragement and love.

To the Springwise community, without whom this book would not be possible.

To the Springspotters, our unique network of amazingly creative, resourceful and inspiring people from all walks of life and from all over the planet.

To our readers who check us out every day and who share our commitment to the Springwise mission, to drive positive change through innovation, purpose and creativity.

To former Springwise Editor and and principle collaborator in the writing of Disrupt!, Chris Kreinczes.

To our writers and collaborators: lead writer George Hammond, Editorial Coordinator Emily Uwemedimo and Managing Editor Linda Ligios.

And to Rebecca Trenner, Keely Khouri, Nick Atkins, Katy Young, Tom Hughes, Grace Wang, Isabel Farchy and Reinier Evers.

To Kirsty Ludbrook, who created the Springwise brand identity.

To our talented illustrator, Grace Holliday.

To Toby Mundy, our elegant and resourceful agent.

To the brilliant team at John Murray, Jonathan Shipley, Iain Campbell, Hannah Corbett and Jess Kim.

To 1% for the Planet for showing the way and allowing us to donate 1% of our royalties to Mother Nature.

And finally to my family and friends for their love and support in calm and disrupted times alike.

Since the 1960s the words of Nobel prize-winning songwriter Bob Dylan The times they are a-changing have consistently rung true as society, politics, business and culture experience rapid development and transformation. If anything, as we survey the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the times are changing at a faster pace than ever before, as the third and fourth industrial revolutions, fuelled by technological advances and globalization, are changing our way of life and our planet in ways that are arguably more fundamental than at any time in history.

In this book you will find 100 innovations that are changing how we work, how we interact with others, how we learn new skills, travel the planet, save the planet, do business, and teach the next generation to innovate further. Some of these innovations are already well under way, while others hint at the future to come. All the ideas and projects described here are real and designed to inspire. They will give you a glimpse of the future and aim to provoke questioning, ignite fresh thinking and catalyse progress. Drawn from more than 30 countries, the innovations have come from a range of sources, from big corporations that are thinking differently to please their shareholders, to social entrepreneurs whose calling is to disrupt for the good of all.

At Springwise, the worlds largest idea-spotting network (springwise.com), we have been spotting and publishing the most interesting innovations since 2002. We do this via our unique and trusted community of over 20,000 global Springspotters in around 190 countries, who power our network. These Springspotters supply us with around 100 innovative ideas for review every single day. We write up the best of these for publication on our website and newsletter, where they are tagged and sorted by industry, demography and business model. We are therefore privileged to have an early view of some of these changes.