The Comedy Central show Nathan For You stars University of Victoria business graduate Nathan Fielder as he goes around helping small businesses with out-of-box ideas. Nathan For You has quickly become a cult-classic and not just with those interested in business and marketing.

The ingenuity of his ideas as he tries to finesse the system allow for great TV while simultaneously teaching the viewer about marketing and business. The way in which he goes about solving businesses’ problems tackle commercial issues, a recent one being disruptive innovations.

Fielder has been able to accomplish news-worthy results with his ideas. It is not only Fielder’s new take on marketing that is so special about the show, it is also the brief lessons about business he learns from his projects, as was mentioned by this Hit & Run blog.

For instance, a few years prior, Nathan comes up with the idea for a struggling taxi company to offer free rides for pregnant woman. By doing so, he hopes that one will give birth in the taxi and garner large amounts of positive publicity for the company.

However, just a few weeks ago, an episode aired in which Nathan attempts to take down Uber for offering free onesies for women who give birth in an Uber.

Convinced they were stealing his idea, Nathan sets out to take them down by creating a sleeper cell of bad drivers ready to give bad Uber services. In addition, he makes an anonymous threat video asking them to remove their onesie offer.

Unfortunately, Nathan was ultimately not able defeat Uber. At the end of the episode, he states that:

“The free market had again chosen a winner. The real enemy wasn’t Uber. It was progress.”

Not only does this teach the viewer about disruptive innovation, it also teaches how powerless businesses are to disruptive innovations. When there is enough progress in an industry to result in a completely new industry, there is very little a business can do except to adapt and try to keep up with innovation.

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