The Innovator’s Dilemma: Kill Your Business, Or Watch Someone Else Do It. 

Why Corporate Explorers Are Your Company’s Lifeline.

Most companies say they embrace innovation. Few actually do.

That’s because innovation sounds exciting. Until it threatens the very thing that’s working. Until it asks you to put your cash cow at risk. Until someone dares to suggest it’s time to “kill your business”, the very one that’s bringing in profits today.

But here’s the hard truth: if you don’t kill it, someone else will. Market disruption doesn’t knock. It bulldozes. This is precisely why Corporate Explorers are more essential than ever. They are those visionary leaders who build tomorrow’s business while everyone else perfects today’s.

The most dangerous place for a business to be is comfortable. Because comfort breeds inertia. Success, ironically, is often the beginning of decline.

Why Most Organizations Fear Change

Change is uncomfortable. It’s uncertain. It asks leadership to navigate without a guarantee and invest profit into unknown territories. For most organizations, that’s terrifying. We’re wired to protect what’s working.

Employees start worrying they may lose their job and feel replaceable. They may feel they are not equipped to operate in new territory.

The structures, roles, cultures, and metrics of successful businesses often become their own trap. They’re optimized for today’s success, not tomorrow’s challenge. And so the business becomes brilliant at exploitation (doing what it already does well), but painfully underdeveloped in exploration (creating what’s next).

And yet, today’s hyper-changing world demands both. This is where the Corporate Explorer steps in.

The Essential Role of Corporate Explorers

Corporate Explorers are not rebels without a cause. They’re not idea chasers. They’re disciplined innovators: leaders who are building tomorrow’s business while everyone else is busy perfecting today’s.

They don’t just brainstorm. They research, experiment, test, fail, pivot, and scale. They are strategic thinkers with an explorer’s mindset and the grit to navigate internal resistance, politics, and risk-aversion.

But here’s the catch:

They cannot succeed without air to breathe.

Explorers Need Independence and Leadership Backing

Too often, organizations say they support innovation while quietly starving it.

Corporate Explorers need their own space to operate, separate from the day-to-day demands of the core business. They need funding, access to talent, decision-making power, and most importantly, full psychological and strategic support from senior leadership.

They need to know that risk-taking won’t cost them their career. That setbacks won’t be punished, but studied. That leadership understands this: ideation and incubation are investments, not expenses.

And leadership? You must give them your trust, not just your lip service. Let them work independently, free from the gravity of existing KPIs, short-term metrics, and conventional thinking.

Because the future rarely looks like the present.

Be the Best at Today and Invent Tomorrow

The most resilient organizations are ambidextrous: masters of both excellence and evolution. They exploit what’s successful today but simultaneously explore what will make them thrive tomorrow.

Apple didn’t stop at computers. Amazon didn’t stop at books. Netflix didn’t stop at DVDs.

They had the courage to risk cannibalizing their own success, because they knew that someone else would do it if they didn’t.

This is the mindset required: 

“If we don’t kill our business, someone else will. Let’s be the ones holding the knife and the blueprint for what comes next.”

So What Can You Do Today?

– Empower Corporate Explorers with dedicated space, resources, and support. 

– Build a culture where failure is feedback and exploration is expected. 

– Model adaptive leadership by showing curiosity, not fear, when faced with change. 

– Ask yourself regularly: “What part of our business needs to be killed before it kills us?”

Final Thought

The world is not slowing down. Disruption is not waiting. And your company’s future doesn’t live in what’s already working. It lives in the hands of those daring enough to build what’s next.

Nurture them. Protect them. Fund them. Or prepare to be outpaced by those who do.

References

Binns, Andrew, Charles A. O’Reilly III, and Michael Tushman. Corporate Explorer: How Corporations Beat Startups at the Innovation Game. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2022.

Harvard Business School Online. Leading Change and Organizational Renewal. 2024.

Tushman, M. L., & O’Reilly, C. A. (2023). The corporate explorer workbook (2nd ed.). Cengage

About the Author

Ilse Gevaert is a psychologist and coach with expertise in neurodiversity (such as Autism and ADHD), giftedness, twice-exceptionality (2e), trauma, narcissistic abuse recovery, and resilience.

Ilse holds a Harvard specialization in Leadership and Management, as well as a certificate in Women in Leadership from Cornell University.

Contact: ilse.resilientminds@gmail.com

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