Nurture misfits – lesson of ultimate disruptor, Alan Turing

By Alec Hogg.My study of disruption started five years ago when Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen surged from 28th to top of the biennial "Thinkers 50" list that ranks the world's best business brains..The 2011 award formalised Christensen's ascension, and reflected the way his theory of "disruption" was becoming one of the business world's most overused words, used by many a be-suited blowhard to elevate a fringe idea. True disruptors do not live comfortable existences within corporate cocoons. Their path is often punctuated by pain and sacrifice..___STEADY_PAYWALL___.One of the world's most recognisable serial disruptors, Virgin founder Richard Branson, says he learnt the hard way how a disruptive offering MUST deliver a discernable quality improvement over incumbents. His expensive lesson came courtesy of Virgin Cola's bombing – it was cheaper, but not better than Coke..South Africans often point to Jannie Mouton as a home grown example of a successful disruptor: his PSG shook up financial services and he bankrolled and inspired other game changers Capitec (banking) and Curro (education). But it came at huge personal cost. Mouton was on his knees after being fired, at 49, by the company he started, one of the most successful of SA's stock brokerages..Another great entrepreneur motivated by the pain of being escorted away from his own business is the late Steve Jobs. Few get the opportunity Jobs had to use such pain as a motivator for change. He did – after being brought back to rescue Apple he disrupted entire industries with his iPhone, iPod and iPad..The ultimate story of a pain enduring disruptor is Alan Turing, a social outcast who applied his suffering to change the world. Turing, who was born in 1912, was a brilliant mathematician whose gift to the world was computer science, from whose base grew the most disruptive technology of the Twentieth Century..We were reminded of his genius – and the appalling way the forces of the day treated him – through recent movies about Bletchley Park, the nerve centre for Allied decoding of Nazi messages during World War Two. As Turing's role become more widely known, and his brilliance produced even greater post-War breakthroughs, the wrong kind of attention was attracted to his private life..In 1952, Turing was prosecuted for "homosexual acts" then criminalised in the UK, and accepted the humiliation of chemical castration as an alternative to prison. Just before his 42nd birthday, this genius that gave the world so much, killed himself by ingesting cyanide..An awful story. But a timely reminder for hose tempted to join the rising global wave of bigotry. Diverse views and open minds have always served mankind best. These are the cornerstones of disruptive thinking. So nurture the oddballs, the misfits, the difficult people you work with. These pirates change the world for the better. As Jobs told us: Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Nurture misfits – lesson of ultimate disruptor, Alan Turing

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