Disruptive innovation, entrepreneurship and organizational transformation
Disruptive innovation, entrepreneurship and organizational transformation
Disruptive innovation, entrepreneurship and organizational transformation
We often associate technology with disruption. We talk about disruptive technology all the time. But not every new technology is disruptive. Conversely, we often fail to imagine the impact of a new technology, especially in economic and societal terms. Let’s look at a simple example: pregnancy tests.
(more…)We hear a lot about “disruptive technologies,” but what makes an innovation disruptive is usually not its technical dimension, and the distinction often made between radical and incremental innovation is not so relevant. What matters is the disruptive nature of the business model created for the new technology.
(more…)In the 1970s, the French government decided to help Africa develop. The lack of lighting had long been identified as an obstacle to development: without lighting, for instance, children could not do their homework at night. Thus the French government decided to subsidize the design and manufacturing of light kits. A small solar panel charged its battery in the day in order to be used at night. The tender was launched, a company that designed robust kits won the contract and the kits were sent to Africa to be distributed. But just a few weeks after the operation was launched, it failed. The kits were not used. Why?
Technology expert Erik Brynjolfsson once remarked about artificial intelligence (AI) that we tend to hold it to a standard of perfection and therefore can be pessimistic about its prospects. This is a very common mistake with any disruptive technology. In fact, it is not so much that we hold disruptive technologies to a standard of perfection, but that we judge their performance against the dominant criteria of existing technology. Let’s explore this and see why it matters and how it leads to disaster.
(more…)This article is the last part of a series of fives articles on mistakes to avoid when managing a disruptive project, extracted from my new book “A Manager’s Guide to Disruptive Innovation”.
One of the mistakes that companies wishing to develop innovative programs often make is to think only in terms of organization and processes: “how can we do it, how can we organize it”, etc. They forget that, as we have pointed out, innovation is a social process and that the human dimension of this process is paramount. Therefore, an important question arises: who should manage an innovation project?
This article is the fourth part of a series of fives articles on mistakes to avoid when managing a disruptive project, extracted from my new book “A Manager’s Guide to Disruptive Innovation”.
A well-managed company measures its performance, and measuring the progress of disruptive innovation projects is extremely important. In this area, two mistakes can be made. The first is to manage the disruptive project like a sustaining innovation project, whereas a disruptive project is fundamentally different. Handling a disruptive project in the same way kills the momentum. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a specific system of measurements to manage its development. One approach might be to monitor the acquisition of new stakeholders and to evaluate them according to the nature of the project (in the case of the Airbnb site, the critical stakeholders were those who first listed their apartments).
This article is the third part of a series of fives articles on mistakes to avoid when managing a disruptive project, extracted from my new book “A Manager’s Guide to Disruptive Innovation”.
The disruption theory can shed new light on the first mover advantage. The first mover advantage theory states that the first entrant in a new market has the advantage of being able to take leadership of the market and effectively resisting the entry of subsequent competitors. This theory forms the conceptual basis of a popular approach known as “blue ocean”.
By advancing the premise that the main factor of competitiveness is the order of arrival on the market, this theory recommends to companies to go as quickly as possible to be the first. However this theory suffers from a major flaw: it is rarely supported by the facts. Many leading players in their field were late entrants, to name just a few: Procter & Gamble with its disposable diapers, Gillette with its disposable razors, Google with its search engines, and Apple with its iPhone.
This article is the second part of a series of fives articles on mistakes to avoid when managing a disruptive project, extracted from my new book “A Manager’s Guide to Disruptive Innovation”.
Because the innovation process is so complex and uncertain, entrepreneurs continually ponder over the ideal approach to an innovation project. Today, some recommend an approach called “fail fast, fail early”. In essence, the idea is that since entrepreneurs cannot really know where they are going, then they should just try something quickly to see if it works, and if it does not work, give up and try something else. This idea is appealing: it calls for open-mindedness and flatters the entrepreneur by highlighting his or her ability to make difficult decisions. However, for a start-up entrepreneur as well as for an existing business, this attitude is dangerous because it is built on an implicit but erroneous premise concerning the innovation process.
This article is the first part of a series of fives articles on mistakes to avoid when managing a disruptive project, extracted from my new book ‘”A Manager’s Guide to Disruptive Innovation”.
One of the cardinal errors with disruptive innovation is to seek to scale up too quickly. In most cases, this condemns the project to fail.
There are two reasons why a company pushes for rapid growth: the first is that large companies need big markets to grow, and the second is that there is an underlying belief that the development of a disruptive innovation project is linear.
We often think that innovation is not successful within an organization because top management puts an end to the project or denies the project the means necessary for its development. This happens, but this is rarely the case. Very often, innovation, especially disruptive innovation, dies when the project is discovered by top management, and the latter, for the price of its support, requires that the project fit within the current organization, thereby removing its disruptive aspects.