More and more we’re seeing the word disruption appear in conversations, articles, blog posts — most often from experts and consultants as well as clients looking to wring more advantage from their investments in communications. It’s certainly a powerful word. It immediately implies breaking with conventions and behaviors that consumers have come to expect from brands they’re familiar with.

For new players or those who invest in creation of new catgeories it may seem easier to sever tradition and innovate. But another word — risk — lies closely underneath and can act in unseen ways to draw ideas and strategies back from the brink to more familiar territory.

From our view, avoiding disruption or the more insidious act of talking the talk but not walking the walk is to say in the end that “process” may be more important than “result.” Great achievements often require taking risks. Not the devil-may-care variety, but the willingness to move beyond the comfort zone of familiar and into the arena of discovery and experimentation.

Disruption is necessary for brands to stand out. More than at any other time in marketing history, we are living in a world of more and more products chasing fewer consumers. There is a mental challenge here for anyone just to keep track, so we quickly work to separate the mundane from the remarkable. To sort our desires and preferences such that the mental shorthand required to make a purchase decision is minimized. The losers in this equation are the brands that can’t, won’t, don’t disrupt.

The challenge for us all is to take the idea of remarkable-ness and get concepts from drawing board into reality. Businesses often work hard to make risk-taking risky, preferring the relative comfort of moving from year to year knowing that what we did a year ago can be re-worked with some modifications and flung out there again. Conditions around us however, are working day and night to dilute the effectiveness of the rinse and repeat approach.

The better idea is two follow a two-step process: think big, then put the hammer down and act.