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Disruptive Innovation: It’s Not a Strategy
What’s the difference between disruption and innovation?
Disruption takes something we already have and abruptly changes how we think about it, learn about it, or do it. It morphs something that we currently have into something that’s new, and that’s typically more efficient and worthwhile. Disruption destroys, but it also creates.
Innovation is about ideas, going from a concept to something new. An example is an idea or invention that can be turned into a product that fulfills a need. It addresses an issue or problem in a way that didn’t exist before. It could be a small tweak that makes a product better and more usable or something bigger that might start a whole new industry.
Disruption and innovation aren’t the same, but innovation has the capability to disrupt. New products and ideas often tend to deflate the need for existing products and services that address the same or related problem.
Disruptive innovation in business is innovation that creates new markets that disrupt existing ones, displacing established businesses, products and alliances.
Clayton Christensen wrote in the defining book for disruptive innovation that “a disruptive innovation doesn’t initially compete with market incumbents for mainstream customers as it is inferior to those already in the market. These products appeal to a part of the market not being served, at lower price points. Over time the disruptor gains revenue and invests in additional product/offering functionality and begins to appeal to mainstream customers. Thus, disruptive innovation is a process.”
The problem is that disruptive innovation isn’t a strategy. A case study of disruptive innovation examples found that it’s only in retrospect that new ideas and actions can be looked back on and attributed as disruptive innovation.
Soren Kaplan, author of Leapfrogging, wrote that “Disruptive innovation isn’t how innovation works in the real world when you’re in the process of doing it – only in retrospect by storytellers.”
