Welcome to the first episode of Material Growth, a podcast of the Material Growth Network hosted by Substack. Find the network at materialgrowth.substack.com and join a community of entrepreneurs and business developers who are focused on growth and business-building in the materials industry.
Today’s episode is an Executive Roundtable that we hosted at the end of last year, with guest speaker Dr. Rajshree Agarwal. Dr. Agarwal is the Rudolph Lamone Chair of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, and Director of the Ed Snider Center for Enterprise and Markets at the University of Maryland. She studies the evolution of industries as fostered by the twin engines of innovation and enterprise.
This is a very special episode for me firstly because Rajshree is a good friend, but more importantly because of the criticality of her research. Like many people of my generation who are focused on innovation and growth, I was highly influenced by the narrative of creative destruction proposed by Joseph Shumpeter and popularized as “disruptive innovation” by Clayton Christensen, author of the Innovator’s Dilemma. The basic narrative is that new industries are pioneered by new entrants that upend the old industries, and that incumbents are mostly inertial players, struggling to responding effectively.
Rajshree’s research over the last 2 decades takes a fresh look at new industry development and really rewrites the narrative. She takes a much more holistic view of new industry ecosystems and finds a more nuanced narrative in an ecosystem of collaboration. She finds critical roles for incumbents, and established firms from other industries as well as startups. And she takes a more detailed look at the motivations and actions of individuals as they transfer knowledge across firms in that ecosystem.
Get ready to have your thinking turned upside down as we speak with Rajshree Agarwal here at Material Growth.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit materialgrowth.substack.com
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