The Four Lenses of Innovation: A Power Tool for Creative Thinking

Trends and discontinuities are patterns of change. When they start out, these patterns may be imperceptible to most people. But innovators begin to notice. They have the foresight to see things before the curve. They are somehow able to join the dots before others do. They start to wonder if there is an incipient trend here, where that trend might lead if it were to scale up, and how it might intersect with other trends. Innovators can sense a disruptive discontinuity in the making, and they intuitively know when they are on to something. Just like venture capitalists, analysts, investors, and people who run tech accelerators, these visionary innovators know that success is often a matter of making a bet on the future.

I like to think of innovators as wave riders. They see what others would dismiss as a ripple on the ocean and somehow recognize it as an oncoming tsunami of change. Then, with perfect timing, they find a way to ride that wave before anyone else, attaching their business to the gathering momentum of the change curve, and thus dramatically multiplying their growth potential. By the time competitors finally wake up to what is happening—usually when the water is already flooding into their business model and threatening to sink it—the innovators are already way out in front.

Just as a literal tsunami can cause untold physical damage, these tsunamis of change can be devastating ...