North South University

Summary On

Good Entrepreneurs don’t set out to disrupt

Submitted to
Aditi Mansur Mahmud(ASSM)
Marketing & International Business Dept.
North South University
Course: INB480
Section: 01

Submitted by

Name ID
Jahida Akter Lovna 1610106630
 Good Entrepreneurs Don’t Set Out to Disrupt.

Executive summary
While the company is known for disrupting the payment industry, Jim McKelvey argues that like
companies before and after his, Square instead expanded the market. He argues, disruption as
market expansion will help more entrepreneurial ventures succeed.

Article Summary

Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey cofounded Square back in 2009 with the initial

goal of expanding credit card acceptance for small businesses. At the same time, Square has
increased the number of credit card-accepting merchants by roughly 2 million in 10 years.
Certainly, a lot of Korean furniture companies have disappeared; nearly half ceased operations
between 2011 to 2016. True, some of these firms merged or were bought out, but that cycle has
been happening in the credit card industry since its beginning.
A decade later Heartland is still in business, along with every other major credit card–processing
firm that existed when they started. Businesses accepting credit cards, but to existing merchants
and their credit card providers, Square caused remarkably little, if any, disruption.

The entrepreneurs that succeed and rise to the highest of their industries began to create, not
destroy. But what Christensen originally called disruptive innovation has now been shortened to
just disruption, and the oversimplification is profound. Of course, those of them in Silicon Valley
don’t call themselves copycats, Jim Mckelvey & Jack Dorsey call themselves disrupted.
But this downfall began four years before IKEA entered the market, so, it’s hard to attribute all
change to the Swedish giant. When Jim McKelvey & Jack Dorsey went into the Dallas–Houston
market in ’71 it had been the thirty-fourth largest market within the US. The focus of the
entrepreneur should be the people that cannot get paid, or travel, or furnish their home.
Jim McKelvey hears pitches every month from startups wishing to destroy the economics of
some existing industry.
But when Clayton Christensen first popularized the disruption concept back in 1997, the idea
was novel and interesting. The concept was like “We weren’t taking the business from anyone,
we were growing the market.” and therefore, the effect wasn't just within the Dallas–Houston
market. But disruption has also never been the focus of good entrepreneurs.

Conclusion
Jim McKelvey & Jack Dorsey’s path of disruption has not been one of the destructions.
According to Jim McKelvey great entrepreneur’s path is either destructive or expansive.
Jim McKelvey learned that the vast majority of entrepreneurial ventures did not steal their
customers from an established business, rather brought new people in the market as they did.

Understanding from article

Big and little companies everywhere, innovation is a survival imperative. Disruptive innovation
shakes up the ecosystem and creates new revenue opportunities through new markets, categories,
and changes in consumer behavior. They also tend to be the foremost infrequent sort of
innovation, often occurring only a couple of times within the lifetime of a corporation.
Disruptive innovations don’t occur naturally. Developed nations, with their large research pools,
are fertile grounds for such innovations, but emerging nations are a newer source of such
innovations.
Encouraging disruptive innovation:
There are a few ways of encouraging disruptive innovation. Some are-
1. Talking to the company’s biggest fans & Ask them how the company can change their lives.
2. Looking at the company’s neighbors for a good idea.
3. Encouraging failure because empowering associates to take risks and encourage
entrepreneurship.
4. Disruptive innovation starts with listening and asking the right questions. But you can’t stop
there. Keep collecting feedback throughout the process.