I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but allow me to break this to you: the electric light bulb did not come from the continuous improvement of candles. You can make a candle taller, use better wax, add a nicer holder, and even scent it with vanilla. It will still be a candle. It will still drip. It will still go out when the wind blows.

That iconic phrase, popularised by management author Oren Harari, perfectly describes the leap from incremental optimisation to disruptive innovation. Harari wasn’t dismissing candles. He was warning us about the trap of working hard on the wrong thing. You can optimise yourself into exhaustion and still never arrive where you want to go, because the destination requires a completely different vehicle.

Think about it in lighting history. For centuries, humans tried to make fire safer, brighter, and longer-lasting. We went from torches to oil lamps to gas lamps to better candles. Each step was real progress. But none of those improvements would ever have given us the ability to light up a city at the flip of a switch. That required stopping, unlearning, and asking a different question: not “how do we make fire better?” but “how do we create light without fire at all?”

The answer came when inventors like Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison stopped trying to fix the candle and shifted focus to entirely new physics. They built on prior knowledge of electricity, vacuum pumps, and materials science, but the breakthrough was a leap. Edison tested over 6,000 filament materials before settling on carbonised bamboo. Swan was demonstrating incandescent lamps in England at the same time. They weren’t iterating on wax. They were reimagining illumination itself.

This tension shows up everywhere in business and problem-solving. There are two schools of thought, and both are right, but at different times.

The Case for Disruption argues that true breakthroughs require stepping outside the box. You cannot create a smartphone by continuously making a rotary phone heavier, prettier, or with a longer cord. You can’t create Netflix by making Blockbuster’s late-fee system more efficient. You can’t create Instagram by putting a better lens on a Kodak film camera. Disruption asks: “What if the rules changed completely?”

And history is full of casualties who missed it. Nokia perfected physical keyboards until they were the best in the world. BlackBerry perfected email on a tiny screen. Blockbuster optimised store layouts and late fees. Kodak made film clearer and cheaper. All of them were polishing candles. Meanwhile, Apple asked, “What if the phone had no buttons?” Netflix asked, “What if there were no stores?” The lightbulb didn’t come from better wax.

The Case for Iteration argues that after the leap, the real work begins. Even after the light bulb was invented, engineers spent the next 50 years improving it. They tested tungsten filaments instead of carbon. They perfected glass-blowing to create better vacuums. They improved power efficiency so one bulb could run for 1,000 hours instead of 40. The first iPhone was revolutionary, but it was terrible by today’s standards: no App Store, no copy-paste, terrible battery. Apple didn’t stop at the leap. They iterated every year. Toyota didn’t invent the car, but it perfected lean manufacturing until cars became more reliable and affordable.

Here in Ghana, we see both sides daily. Some trotro unions spend years negotiating better fares and newer tyres, while ride-hailing apps reimagined transport entirely. Some radio stations keep buying better transmitters, while podcasts and TikTok redefined how young people consume content. Some banks built more branches with nicer chairs, while mobile money asked, “What if your wallet lived on your phone?” The question isn’t whether the old model was bad. It’s whether the world has already moved to a new physics.

The danger is mixing up which season you’re in. Most founders are polishing candles when they need a lightbulb. A restaurant owner tweaking the menu for the 10th time won’t survive if the real problem is that people now want delivery. A school adding more classrooms won’t compete if the real problem is that learners want skills on demand and online. Working hard is not the same as working right.

But the opposite danger is just as real: chasing lightbulbs and refusing to iterate. Some founders pivot every 3 months, looking for the next big disruption, while ignoring that their core product is buggy, slow, and confusing. Disruption gets you attention. Iteration gets you retention. Tesla was a lightbulb. But Tesla also spent years iterating on battery efficiency, charging speed, and software updates. The lightbulb gets you in the room. The iterations keep the lights on.

So the question isn’t whether disruption or iteration is better. The question is timing. Ask: “Am I solving this problem within the current rules, or do I need new rules entirely?” If you’re asking “how do we make this 10% better?” you’re iterating. If you’re asking “what would make this entire category irrelevant?” you’re disrupting. Progress needs both. We needed the leap to electricity, and we needed the decades of better filaments, LEDs, and solar power that followed.

Here’s the move: stop wasting your life making a better candle in an electric world. And once you’ve found your lightbulb, don’t leave it dim. Do the unglamorous work of making it brighter, cheaper, and more reliable. That’s how you stop optimising what’s dying and start building what lasts.