After writing _[The Disruption Formula]()_ , I’ve been invited into a handful of companies to speak about disruption—and my message to established businesses is rarely comforting. The truth is, your industry **will** be disrupted. And if history is any guide, that disruption probably won’t come from within. It almost never does. More often, it’s an outsider—someone with no legacy systems, no internal politics, and no fear of breaking the model—who ends up flipping an entire industry upside down.
That doesn’t mean existing companies are doomed. A few have managed to disrupt themselves—and there’s a lot to learn from how they did it.
What follows is an excerpt from _[The Disruption Formula]()_ —specifically, Chapter 6: _Who Really Disrupts?_ —which explores why disruption almost always comes from outsiders, and how, if you’re running an established company, you can still defy the odds.
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## Chapter 6: Who Really Disrupts?
People often assume that the companies with the most money, best talent, and biggest market share should be the ones leading innovation. But that’s rarely how disruption plays out. More often, it’s the outsider—the newcomer, the startup with little or no experience in the industry they’re about to disrupt—who ends up flipping the entire market.
Why? Because incumbents are designed to protect the status quo. Their incentives are tied to what already works. Their org charts are built for efficiency, not reinvention. Their leaders answer to boards, investors, existing customers, and internal politics—systems built to avoid risk, not embrace it. That’s why Blockbuster didn’t become Redbox. Kodak didn’t lead the digital camera revolution. Taxi companies didn’t invent Uber. And telecom giants didn’t build Twilio.
These companies didn’t fail because they lacked talent. They failed because they lacked permission. When your business model depends on late fees, film rolls, $20 razors, or complex contracts, it’s nearly impossible to walk away from it on your own.
Even when the future is obvious, incumbents hesitate. They analyze. Delay. Try to bolt new ideas onto old systems. But by the time they act, it’s often too late. Outsiders don’t have that burden. They aren’t constrained by existing revenue, structure, or reputation. They’re free to rethink everything—and move fast.
That freedom is the advantage. And if a newcomer finds a 10X opportunity—something dramatically cheaper, faster, or better—they can move without asking permission. The right question isn’t, “Why hasn’t someone done this already?” It’s, “What’s stopping the current players from doing it now?” The answer is almost always: legacy. What seems impossible to an incumbent often looks inevitable to a challenger.
That’s how disruption happens—not because the idea is invisible, but because the system that built the current business model can’t walk away from it. If the market hasn’t caught up yet, that’s not a red flag. That’s the signal. Disruption doesn’t start with dominance. It starts with perspective.
But what if you’re not an outsider? What if you’re leading an established company and feel those constraints pressing in—legacy systems, customer expectations, sunk costs? You don’t have to guess at the outsider perspective. You can go get it.
One of the fastest ways to solve your Essential Question is to talk to someone outside your industry. Most executives instinctively turn to peers for advice—but peers share the same blind spots. They’ve absorbed the same assumptions you’re trying to challenge. Outsiders, on the other hand, bring clarity. They ask naive questions. They notice absurdities that insiders take for granted. And sometimes, one conversation with someone from a completely unrelated field can unlock the breakthrough you couldn’t see on your own.
Barrett Ersek’s original insight didn’t come from a lawn care conference. It came from a casual conversation with someone who wrote software for tax professionals. That outsider saw the problem differently—because he didn’t know the “rules.” He offered a simple idea from his own world that transformed Barrett’s.
I’ve seen the same pattern with leaders across industries. Sometimes I’m the outsider asking, “But what if you had to solve this?” Other times, it’s a spouse, a podcast guest, or even an AI acting like a skeptical competitor. The source doesn’t matter. The shift in perspective does.
If you’re on the inside, don’t try to disrupt alone. Borrow the lens of someone who hasn’t been conditioned by your industry. You don’t need permission to think differently—you just need a fresh set of eyes.
**Why Newcomers Win**
There are structural reasons why most 10X disruptions come from outsiders. As covered earlier in this book, making something 10X cheaper is rarely possible within an existing business model. But beyond that, there are deeper forces that make breakthrough innovation hard—especially from inside the system. Here’s why:
* **Incentives:** Incumbents are built to protect current revenue. Startups can afford to bet everything.
* **Organizational Inertia:** Big companies move slowly. Bureaucracy kills speed.
* **Incremental Thinking:** They’re wired for continuous improvement—not reinvention.
* **Customer Expectations:** Existing customers expect consistency. Disruption risks alienating them.
* **Sunk Costs:** Infrastructure, processes, and internal systems are hard to unwind.
* **Diluted Focus:** Startups go all-in on one idea. Incumbents juggle dozens.
* **Culture:** “That’s not how we do things” is hard to shake. Conservatism wins.
**But Sometimes, It Happens Anyway**
Barrett Ersek was running a successful lawn care company when he attended a presentation by Verne Harnish—and left with a powerful question: How can I reduce the delivery of lawn quotes from weeks to two days or less?
He solved it. But when he brought the solution back to his team, they resisted. The idea didn’t fit the current model. So Barrett made a decision few incumbents are willing to make: he sold the business and started fresh. He built a new company with a team aligned around the new approach. That’s usually how it plays out—because disruption rarely survives the systems incumbents build to protect what’s already working.
Some rare companies, however, have managed to disrupt from within—without starting over.
**Little Caesars: A Faster Way to Pizza**
Before Little Caesars’ breakthrough, takeout pizza meant a 15–25 minute wait. With Hot-N-Ready, customers could walk in and leave with a large pepperoni pizza in under 30 seconds. No order. No wait. That wasn’t just a service tweak—it was a 10X improvement in speed. It created a new customer behavior: spontaneous pizza pickup.
The model scaled. Stores became high-efficiency throughput machines. Standardization drove margin. Hot-N-Ready became a billion-dollar concept inside a legacy brand—without destroying its supply chain or cannibalizing profits. A rare example of an incumbent disrupting itself before someone else did it to them.
**Fastenal: From Days to Seconds**
Fastenal had been operating since 1967 in the same industrial supply business. But in 2008, after four decades, they reinvented themselves.
Before their shift, workers in factories and warehouses had to wait up to 48 hours to receive basic, high-use items like PPE, cutting tools, fasteners, and batteries. That lag slowed production. So Fastenal launched FAST Solutions—vending machines stocked with critical parts, placed directly on customer worksites. What once took two days now took seconds.
It wasn’t just operationally better—it was behaviorally different. It redefined procurement. No requisition forms, no delays, no downtime. Just swipe your badge and get what you need.
The change wasn’t easy. Sales teams, logistics, finance—every department likely resisted. But Fastenal pushed forward. By 2016, they had installed over 58,000 machines. Vending represented nearly half of their revenue. Today, it’s still a major engine in a $7 billion business. They didn’t invent vending. They simply applied it in a way their competitors couldn’t—or wouldn’t.
**The Lesson**
Disruption doesn’t come from brilliance alone. It comes from the willingness to walk away from what’s already working. Most incumbents can’t. That’s why the door stays open for outsiders. But if you’re on the inside—and you’re willing to question everything—you can still make the leap. The playbook is the same: find one part of the experience to make 10X cheaper, faster, or better. The difference is, you’ll need the courage to break your own model before someone else does.
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If this idea resonates, _[The Disruption Formula]()_ goes deeper into how to do it—showing you the exact framework and more than 25 case studies of companies that used it to transform their industries and scale far beyond expectations. You can [purchase the book here.]()