MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Leading Disruption in a Legacy Business

Few doubt that something extraordinary has happened at Nvidia, as its share price has risen by more than 8,000% over the past decade. It now ranks in the top 10 of the most valuable companies globally, thanks to its transformation from the world’s leading provider of graphic processors to a leader in computing for artificial intelligence and autonomous driving.1 CEO Jensen Huang has confounded the conventional wisdom that established companies cannot reinvent themselves and their industries through radical innovation.

Nvidia isn’t an outlier — rather, we see it as one of the more eye-catching examples of the developing trend of large corporations leading radical innovation. Among them is LexisNexis, which became an early leader in big data analytics by creating a multibillion-dollar business that is larger than the original legal information firm. Another, Deloitte Consulting, is challenging the hundred-year-old management consulting model with Deloitte Pixel, a new open-talent model. Best Buy has broken out of its pure-play retail box to create a health tech and services company for the elderly. And MasterCard has moved from a focus on processing credit card transactions to creating new digital payment solutions.

About the Author

Andy Binns (@ajmbinns) is director of Change Logic, a Boston-based strategic innovation advisory firm. Michael L. Tushman (@michaeltushman) is a professor at Harvard Business School. Charles O’Reilly III is a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. This article is based on a chapter from their new book, Corporate Explorer: How Corporations Can Beat Startups at the Innovation Game (Wiley, 2022).