Cannabis Firms: Is Disruptive Innovation in the Cards?
This post is about cannabis, baseball, and disruption. Warning: I use many puns.
On March 17, I wrote about a Canadian LP, Nextleaf Solutions (CSE:OILS) (OTCQB:OILFF), who were putting up impressive business results by hitting innovation singles and doubles i.e. repeatedly delivering small but important operational improvements.
There is another kind of innovation, Disruptive Innovation, which can change the rules of the game.
DI gives firms the ability to outflank competition, uniquely delight consumers and drive strong financial returns.
Our industry can draw inspiration and lessons from the latest DI to hit baseball, the ‘Torpedo’ Bat.
The TB debuted last week with the New York Yankees with notable results. This new kind of bat has led to 3x more home runs per game.
These unique bats have their widest part, the barrel, closer to the player’s hands – sort of like a bowling pin, but still within MLB’s rules. The design gives the batter a better chance of hitting the ball on the “sweet spot” and seemingly more confidence.
In a way, the cannabis industry is similar MLB. They are both rules-based, traditional in their own way, and followed by millions of devoted fans (i.e. community).
Pastimes and markets like this are often susceptible to ‘out of the box’ thinking that can stir thing ups.
The rise of the TB offers many lessons for innovators looking to leverage DI in cannabis:
1️⃣ Choose an ambitious goal or big problem to be solved.
The NYY’s goal was more hits and home runs.
2️⃣ Assemble your experts and data.
To develop the TB, the Yankee’s brought in a baseball fan and MIT-trained physicist to analyze hitting data and tinker with different designs.
3️⃣ Reframe the problem
Great hitting is part batter and their bat. Every team focuses on the former. The NYY paid attention to the latter.
4️⃣ Test and iterate
Great ideas and prototypes need refinements; the TB was 2 years in the making.
When you think about it, widening the ‘sweet spot’ is not a revolutionary idea. And it was always there ‘in plain sight'
Passing on or ignoring disruptive ideas often trace to cognitive blindness and institutional myopia. Examples include:
▶️ People in the maelstrom often don’t see the obvious or won’t look beyond their narrow purview;
▶️ Employees will lack confidence in their ideas or assume something so simple has already been explored and disproved by others;
▶️ Companies won’t do the refinement necessary to implement. This is the ‘we tried it, it failed’ excuse.
Batter up! 🥎
#Nextleafsolutions #disruptiveinnovation #torpedobat #innovation