Zone to Win: responding to disruption

I recently had the privilege of hearing Geoffrey Moore speak about the struggles incumbent organisations face in responding to industry change.   His book, Zone To Win (thoroughly good read), is a detailed discussion on the model of how change can be done effectively.

His position is that organisations that get disrupted are not remotely unaware or ignorant of the incoming change to their industry - far from it, they're often the first to spot it.   It's simply that they fail to organise around prioritising changing the company.    Lots of anecdotes support this:  Blockbuster wasn't last to market with a streaming video service (I believe they were one of the first), they just never made it a serious play inside their company.

His approach - apparently tangibly executed in some form at Microsoft and at Salesforce - positions that one divides a company into four zones - Performance, Productivity, Innovation and Transformation.    Each zone gets allocated a different goal (hit the numbers, improve efficiency, anticipate the next wave, transform one innovation into a 10% revenue line).    Plugging innovation goals into teams in the performance zone won't succeed as the main priority is hitting the numbers (and for established profitable companies, the right bet).    Giving performance goals to an innovation team is pointless as that needs to be a no-regrets bet around learning / anticipation.

It's an insightful position: recognizing the need to methodically structure an organisation for industry change, and then executing on it with a high level of discipline.  Interesting perspective that internal disruption is all about distinctive and deliberate prioritization.