Nicolas Bordas: “Disruption Is an Intentional, Positive Strategic Breakthrough”

Who today hasn’t heard of “ disruption ” ? Uttered like a magic formula, disruption seems to carry exceptional and enviable powers, enabling companies to explore the uncharted territories of innovation and competitiveness. But how exactly does “disruption” work? What secrets does the formula hold? We spoke with one of its most prominent champions, Nicolas Bordas, International Vice-President of TBWA, the famous “Disruption Company.”

TBWA trademarked the term “disruption” in 1995. Back then it had a primarily creative meaning, evoking “creative destruction.” Does creativity ultimately prevail in digital transformation?

Nicolas Bordas: The word “disruption” existed in French at the end of the 19th century in a very restricted technical sense, referring to an electrical short circuit. It was also an English term describing negative accidental phenomena, particularly natural disasters (typhoons or tsunamis, for example). Jean-Marie Dru’s contribution in 1992 was to use the term to describe intentional, positive creative breakthroughs. In TBWA’s usage, a Disruption is an intentional action (innovation, communication) that creates a radical break with an existing convention in order to trigger a lasting positive change.

Take Dick Fosbury in 1968: by challenging the convention that high jumpers approach the bar face-first, he invented a radically new technique—clearing the bar back-first—and permanently revolutionized the sport. From Uber to Airbnb, via Amazon or BlaBlaCar, the digital revolution has generated countless disruptions, to the point that people began speaking of “Digital Disruption”—a kind of meta-disruption and source of multiple disruptions.

To disrupt—the verb evokes rupture and fracture. What exactly are we talking about? Proposing new services? Or going much further, by transforming your business model?

N.B.: Disruption is a strategic, intentional, and positive breakthrough. While the original method was designed in 1992 for advertising and communications, it quickly proved effective across all of marketing: product/services, pricing, and distribution. Velib and Autolib are product and service disruptions; the green Heineken bottle and the transparent Absolut Vodka bottle are packaging disruptions. EasyJet and La Compagnie are pricing disruptions in aviation. The Apple Store and Amazon Prime are distribution disruptions.

This progressive extension of Disruption into all business areas opened the door to management disruption and business model disruption—and to the growing use of TBWA’s Disruption methodology in innovation design, which is the theme of Jean-Marie Dru’s latest book, “NEW—15 Disruptive Approaches to Innovation.” The digital revolution considerably amplifies disruption potential. In the digital era, products become services, prices become relative, distribution becomes ubiquitous, and communication goes viral.

The value of Disruption is that it allows companies and organizations to step out of their traditional competitive universe and change the market rules. Successful disruptions don’t just gain extra market share—they gain a “share of the future” in tomorrow’s market. In other words, they allow companies to be ahead of their time. That is why disruptions radically transform markets.

See also: What Are the Key Challenges of a Digital Transformation Project?

Alongside uberization, doesn’t this term frighten companies?

N.B.: The term “Disruption,” like the term “uberization ” can indeed be frightening. The same is true of any change. But as Tom Peters, the American management guru (author of “In Search of Excellence”), once commented on one of Jean-Marie Dru’s books: any organization in an uncertain, shifting environment must “disrupt itself before it gets disrupted.” There is no other choice. The challenge is to strategically choose what you want to disrupt—that is, to decide what must change, and what must be preserved for the future. Disruption is a strategic approach. It’s not about tearing everything down and rebuilding from scratch, but about identifying what needs to change by questioning a chosen convention, in order to accelerate the realization of one’s vision and project, and secure a greater share of the future.

Concretely, how do you integrate disruption into company strategy?

N.B.: Disruption within a company or organization can only truly take hold when its leader expresses the will for it. It took a Steve Jobs to resurrect Apple and a Carlos Ghosn to save Nissan, both through resolutely disruptive approaches. But a leader’s will is not enough unless they bring the collective they lead along in the transformation. That is why we practice “Disruption Days” so frequently at TBWA—collaborative workshops that allow organizations to collectively build their disruptive vision. Communication disruption is 100% in service of company strategy. It is a means of accelerating its implementation, by shedding what is not useful and focusing on what will drive success.

The key is to articulate the company’s vision explicitly, and to share it not only through words, but above all through concrete actions and behaviors. Apple’s historic disruption—placing the machine in service of human creativity and refusing to let humans become slaves to the machine (remember the 1984 Apple film produced by our American agency Chiat Day to launch the first Macintosh)—was embodied through the “Think Different” slogan in 1997 when Steve Jobs returned, and above all through the design of its products (iMac, iPod, iPad, iPhone, iWatch…), its distribution model (Apple Stores), and its communications.

See also: 8 Essential Tools for Change Management

Which companies do you consider role models in terms of disruption?

N.B.: Beyond Apple, I could naturally cite many companies TBWA has worked with, from Michelin to Cetelem, via McDonald’s or SNCF. I’ll use Airbnb as my example here—a company that disrupted not only in terms of “Business Model,” but also in terms of vision, embodied by its brand tagline “Belong Anywhere” and its brand idea “Live like a local,” and finally through its innovation logic, with “Experiences” that let you live like a local by day, not just at night.

But we can also cite older companies not considered part of the “new digital economy,” which have managed to lastingly benefit from the disruption they created for themselves. Take Danone: after executing a fundamental Disruption around Health (“What if food were our first medicine?”) that led it to reconfigure the entire group around health foods (by divesting all other businesses), it is now repositioning around the idea that food can and must change the world, embodied by its slogan “One Planet – One Health,” as well as numerous initiatives around the key challenges of food.

TBWA trademarked “disruption” before the year 2000, yet the agency allows anyone to use it. Is the term too overused today?

N.B.: The Disruption trademark was registered in 1995 by TBWA (then known as BDDP) in around forty countries. TBWA still presents itself as “The Disruption Company,” whose mission is to create disruptive ideas that give our clients a greater share of the future. We are very proud that the term Disruption has become almost generic, and our approach has always been to encourage its use—provided it is not used commercially or in a way that creates confusion with our methodology. We have only pursued legal protection when it caused commercial confusion with our approach.

If you had just one piece of advice for a company looking to disrupt its market, what would it be?

N.B.: In a world that is transforming, the mistake is not to evolve—at the risk of standing still and being left behind. My advice: don’t be afraid to try! Only those who never try make just one mistake… I regularly offer a “money-back guarantee” for the Disruption Days I take part in, and I have yet to give a single refund!

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