ExecTec - Disruptive Innovation

In a topic on innovation I once wrote:

“A first step is often to break with routine. Face it, you are not likely to find something new getting up at the same time, eating the same breakfast cereal and driving the same predictable path to work where you will spend the day batting one problem after another out of your office. Take a different routes to work, try eating out instead of in, work in a different way or different space, all of these things will expose you to new thoughts and ideas.”

Wikipedia defines a disruptive innovation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation) as an innovation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation) that helps create a new market (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market) and value network (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_network), and eventually goes on to disrupt an existing market and value network (over a few years or decades), displacing an earlier technology.

Disruption is big these days with everyone searching for something not only innovative but disruptive. It is not only new and hot but if executed correctly it is much like the semi real undefendable crane kick in the movie Karate Kid 1.

The Harvard Business review in this article titled Surviving Disruption (http://bit.ly/12nIOns) points out that many feel the best defence in this case is a strong offence. “Develop a disruption of your own before it’s too late to reap the rewards of participation in new, high-growth markets”.

However the article also points out that, “Disruption is less a single event than a process that plays out over time, sometimes quickly and completely, but other times slowly and incompletely.”

So it seems sometimes what is disruptive is really a case of innovation in the face of one cheese being moved (http://bit.ly/12nIXr1).

The vastly successful buggy whip industry titans will tell you it’s hard to perceive these sea changes when you are surrounded by people hired specifically to fine tune and perfect your buggy whips.

Are you vulnerable to disruption for example when you think your core business is railroads when in fact your core business is transportation of things.

Maxwell Wessel in this HBR post titled Stop Reinventing Disruption (http://bit.ly/11Qp6FO) feels the difference between simple innovation and disruption is when the competition starts “with a barely-good-enough product that captures consumers too cheap to buy the existing, expensive product, then make it better and better until one day, it's as good as, or better, than the incumbent product.”

Clearly there is much to discuss when it comes to disruption and innovation so join us as we discuss the ins and outs of disruptive innovation.

As always, there is no better way to meet and connect with other executives then over dinner and conversation. $21 in advance via PayPal or $25 at the event gets you a full dinner, drink and the best networking around.