When a disruptive brand becomes the incumbent: Salesforce's new problem

It is easier to challenge the status quo when your company does not yet have a status quo of its own to protect. Salesforce began as a challenger to traditional enterprise software.

After growing, it came to carry customers, revenue, integrations, partners, processes, and expectations that also need to be preserved.

To follow the full trajectory that led to this tension, see the complete Salesforce analysis.

View the full Salesforce analysis

The narrative advantage of those still entering the market

New companies can attack existing structures with greater freedom. They have less legacy, fewer customers dependent on old processes, and less revenue tied to the current architecture.

This allows more radical messages. Salesforce in the early 2000s could declare the “end of software” because its business did not yet depend on preserving the category it was attacking.

Success changes that position. Once a company becomes a reference point, every change must account for migration, compatibility, security, contracts, and the impact on an entire ecosystem.

What was freedom becomes responsibility

A platform used by thousands of organizations cannot treat every innovation as if it were starting from zero. Customers need to keep operating. Partners need to adapt services. Professionals want to know whether the skills they have accumulated will still hold value.

The result is a permanent tension between exploiting the current business and building the next one.

This tension appears frequently in the history of dominant companies. The analysis of loss aversion helps explain part of the problem: when a great deal of value has accumulated, the possibility of losing what already works weighs heavily on decisions.

Protecting revenue can delay the next curve

A mature company has to finance innovation with a business that already exists. This creates incentives different from those of a startup.

Projects that threaten current products may look less attractive in the short term. New experiences may require investments whose returns are not yet predictable. Large customers may pressure the company for continuity before accepting deep changes.

The risk is turning protection into immobility. The company keeps improving the present while another organization redefines the future.

The challenge is not to look rebellious

Brands born with a disruptive identity may try to preserve symbols of rebellion even after becoming leaders. That works only when the experience continues to support the narrative.

A dominant company does not need to pretend it is still small. It can take another position: an organization capable of driving change at scale, with governance, evidence, and responsibility.

The Canva case helps illustrate another stage of disruption. Expanding access creates growth, but it also creates new expectations around professionalization, reliability, and product depth.

Community increases the cost of any change

Salesforce has more than customers. It has certified professionals, partners, developers, events, groups, and careers connected to its ecosystem.

This creates strength, but it also increases the responsibility attached to changes in naming, products, and skills. A portfolio decision can alter study materials, partner positioning, and perceptions of professional value.

The company needs to innovate without treating its own community as a communication detail.

Agentforce is a test of that maturity

Moving into AI agents allows Salesforce to present another transition between eras. The difference is that the company now also represents a large share of the infrastructure it intends to transform.

A startup can ask for room to experiment. An incumbent must demonstrate security, control, integration, and results inside complex environments.

This scenario brings innovation closer to governance. Enthusiasm has to coexist with clear limits.

How a mature company preserves its capacity for disruption

Some practices help reduce the risk of complacency.

• Separate metrics for the current business from metrics for future exploration.

• Create room for projects that may threaten existing revenue.

• Test new propositions with small groups before changing the entire ecosystem.

• Treat customer objections as operational evidence, not irrational resistance.

• Measure whether the new narrative is accompanied by real changes in experience.

The analysis of Red Bull's marketing strategy also shows how a brand can broaden meaning without relying only on the product. For an incumbent, that power needs to be accompanied by consistency between discourse and operations.

The paradox of success

If a disruptive company truly changes the market, its disruption tends to become the standard. When that happens, the problem is no longer beating the old system. It becomes preventing the system the company itself built from blocking the next transformation.

This is Salesforce's new problem. Its history gives it authority to talk about category shifts. Its scale increases the pressure to prove that the next shift is concrete.

Continue exploring EuAlan

Also read Loss Aversion, Canva and disruption and Red Bull Marketing Strategy.