The Disruptor
Contrarian and drawn to the edge; challenges the settled answer.
Jim McKelvey is The Disruptor because his foundational insight holds that genuine innovation obeys a different physics from incremental improvement. His account of knowingly violating seventeen regulations to ship Square's first reader is not recklessness but recognition that uncharted ground carries no pre-existing compliance map.
“Yeah, so originally the company was called Squirrel because we thought squirrels were cute and saved nuts and thought that was a good payment name. Turns out it was a good payment name and another company had a payment system called Squirrel. So we pivoted to Square. But I designed the Square Reader to be the shape of an acorn.”
“It was absolutely clear to me that the World Wide Web was going to wipe out the CD-ROM trade show business. And so I told the whole company, well, look, we need to pivot into conference publishing, using the same tools that we have, but instead of publishing trade show literature, we're going to do boring technical papers.”
“I'm still on the board I'm basically the voice of the merchant. I am probably of the board members the most connected to people who get their hands dirty or, you know, bus tables or clean up after other people. I won't say why I'm there because that's not my choice. They have asked me and I've stayed. I love this company.”
“Yeah. And I was fishing for other ideas, but hadn't come up with anything. And then I went back to St. Louis to sort of pack up my stuff. Okay, I'm going to move to California and take my fianc ⁇ with me. And that's how committed I was. And I was in my studio trying to sell a piece of glass.”
Masters in Business: “Jim McKelvey on 'The Innovation Stack' (Podcast)”
LISTEN AT THE SOURCE ↗THE RECORD IS CHECKABLE