Speaker, social researcher and author Michael McQueen runs workshops on creating ‘roadmaps’ for disruption for organisations including Tupperware, Randstad, Pepsi, AMP and Bankwest.

There are four key questions that groups focus on to challenge their ideas of how to think about their business.

What business 
are you in?

Here McQueen wants participants to think about the DNA of the business. “In many cases it has got nothing to do with the products you are selling or the services you are offering,” he says.

Kodak is his favourite case study in getting it wrong. “Kodak lost sight of its
real business, which was being a memory-preservation company. Because they had a narrow focus, they got locked in a paradigm that they were a film business.”

Why do we do things the way we do?

This second stage of the workshop is about questioning processes and how things are historically done. “The question, ‘why do we do it that way’ is so critical,” he says.

“This is about looking at business practices with fresh eyes, and creating feedback mechanisms to allow people with fresh eyes to give input.”

What does our marketplace really want and how has that changed?

Often work around this question starts with the flip side: “What do they not want?”

Where are the gaps in the marketplace?

This simple question has complex answers and involves McQueen working with participants to respond to his theory that as marketplaces get disrupted, businesses have a choice – “Go big, go boutique or go broke. You have a lane that you have to pick.”