• by Patrick Kampff , January 5, 2026

Five hundred million people can’t be wrong.

That’s roughly how many times Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” has been played since its release. Yet when he first performed it at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, it wasn’t a triumph. The crowd came expecting the comforting “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Instead, they got electric guitars and something that felt foreign. They felt betrayed, and soon the boos started a-coming.

But Dylan didn’t stumble. He crossed the line that separated the familiar from the new. And in doing so, he shifted modern music. Rejection, with time, became recognition. He was simply ahead of the curve.

The hidden pattern behind disruption

The late business consultant Clayton Christensen called this tension the innovator’s dilemma: the paradox in which success blinds leaders to emerging possibilities. Companies rise by serving their best customers, refining their products and maximizing performance—yet those habits keep them anchored to what already works, while the future takes root elsewhere.

The irony is that these shifts rarely fail because the technology isn’t ready, but because society isn’t. People resist change that threatens familiarity. Just as Dylan’s fans wanted another folk tune, customers often want the comfort of what exists. That gap between readiness and acceptance is where disruption brews.

The CMO’s version of the dilemma

For CMOs, this dilemma plays out in every boardroom. The pressure to deliver quarterly performance overshadows the courage to pursue what’s next. Yet clinging to current success is what guarantees future irrelevance.

Leaders who outlast disruption think differently. They know markets are stories in motion, and branding is how you write the next chapter before anyone else believes in it. Brands become interpreters, helping society make sense of tomorrow.

How to think like an innovator

Create distance from the core. Disruptive bets need freedom from the processes and profit expectations of the core business. Innovation needs air before it can earn.

Listen at the fringes. The next big audience rarely looks like your current one. Disruption begins in the cultural edges or niche communities.

Tell the story before the market exists. Innovative brands create acceptance rather than waiting for it, humanizing the unfamiliar so audiences feel part of what’s coming, not threatened by it.

Measure belief, not just performance. The metrics that matter are curiosity, trial and narrative adoption. Over-optimize too soon and you’ll suffocate the ideas that could redefine your category.

The courage to play a new song

Dylan’s 1965 performance captures what every innovator faces: that instant when the world isn’t ready for what you have to offer. He didn’t know “Like a Rolling Stone” would become one of the most influential songs of all time, only that repeating the familiar would mean standing still. Innovation always sounds like noise before it becomes music.

For CMOs, the task is to lead audiences through that noise and help them hear what the future sounds like before it becomes obvious.

Because the brands that win tomorrow are the ones brave enough to play a new song—even if the crowd boos first.