How Disruptors Break the Mold: Lessons in Innovation, Gender & Technology | DisrupTV Ep. 92
This episode features Dr. Patti Fletcher (author of DISRUPTERS: Success Strategies From Women Who Break the Mold), Toby Olshanetsky (CEO, prooV), Alexey Sapozhnikov (CTO, prooV), and Ron Miller (Enterprise Reporter at TechCrunch), in conversation with hosts R “Ray” Wang and Vala Afshar.
Key Takeaways
Women’s Leadership & Disruption
Dr. Patti Fletcher shares frameworks and stories that illuminate how women disrupt traditional models. Her research shows that breaking mold often requires not just personal courage, but structural support, visibility, and access to networks.
Startup Innovation with prooV
Toby Olshanetsky and Alexey Sapozhnikov discuss their platform prooV, focusing on how proof-of-value approaches can accelerate innovation while managing risk. The idea is to test and validate before scaling, minimizing waste and increasing credibility among stakeholders.
Bridging Reporting & Reality
Ron Miller brings the journalist’s lens—how tech and enterprise reporters see disruption, what trends are getting attention, and what’s still under-covered. His perspective helps ground visionary ideas in what the market, regulators, and society are noticing or needing.
Cultural & Structural Barriers
The conversation surfaces gender bias, organizational inertia, and the difficulty of changing norms. Fletcher emphasizes around how women often have to prove twice as much, or navigate expectations that limit their disruptive potential.
Practical Strategies for Change
Several actionable ideas come up: fostering safe spaces for experimentation, using proof-points to build credibility, mentorship and sponsorship, and increasing visibility of diverse innovators. These aren’t just ideals but levers that leaders and organizations can pull.
Final Thoughts & Implications
- For Leaders & Organizations: To foster true innovation and disruption, it’s vital to re-examine your internal culture. Are you giving people — especially underrepresented groups — the visibility, mentorship, resources, and validation they need to experiment and fail safely?
- For Innovators (Especially Women): It helps to build proof points early, lean into communities and networks that can support, and communicate both the journey and the value. Disruption rarely comes from perfection, but from persistence plus support.
- For the Ecosystem (Media, Investors, Partners): Be aware of bias—not just explicit, but the more subtle tendencies of what kinds of stories get amplified, who gets funding, who gets mentorship and coverage. Broadening that view helps surface more, diverse disruption.
Why This Episode Matters
Though this episode aired in 2018, many themes remain deeply relevant: gender equity in tech, the challenge of scaling disruptive ideas, and the role of proof-of-value in today’s fast-moving enterprise environment. As we see renewed attention to diversity, fairness, and how innovation is supported (or hindered), the insights from this conversation are more timely than ever.
Related Episodes
Here are a few other DisrupTV episodes that complement the themes in Episode 92 and might interest you:
- Episode 93: Mark Lombardi, Melissa Schilling & Gunther Sonnenfeld — Exploring what makes “serial breakthrough innovators” and how idiosyncratic traits can lead to major impact.
- Episode 94: Andres Reiner, James Norwood, Cindy Zhou — Discussions on digital transformation and leadership in customer-centric enterprises.
- Episode 100: Dave Kellogg, Billy Bosworth & Virginia Backaitis — How organizations scale innovations, manage disruption, and lead through change.
