3 tips to achieve a disruptive innovation

Most tech entrepreneurs and innovators would love to have a disruptive innovation, but there is no precise path to that goal. This post outlines the term and suggests three tips that could lead to a disruptive innovation.

“Disruptive innovation”, a seemingly oxymoron phrase, is much valued in the tech industry as a category of game-changing ideas, that revolutionises (disrupts) and existing market and possibly replacing well established technologies and value chains. Initially coined by Clayton Christensen, a disruptive innovation is defined as

… a new product or service or a new business model that doesn’t attack the core market by bringing a better product to established users in direct competition with the leaders in an industry, but rather it comes into the low end of the market, either through a business model that can compete at much lower costs, can compete profitably at lower costs, or brings to the market a product or service that is so much more convenient and simple to use and affordable that a whole new population of people who previously couldn’t afford or didn’t have the skill to own and use a product can now own one.

(Source: The Motley Fool)

Although disruptive innovations exist through history – inventions that have forever changed the trajectory of human civilisation, they are not common; hence they are highly coveted when indeed they do occur.  Two recent tech-related ones that readily come to mind are:

• email, which replaced “snail mail” (mail delivered by post), thus changing the pace of communication from days and months, to seconds
• Apple’s iTunes store, provided a legitimate medium through which to purchase and download individual songs (and eventually other digital products), at a time when most peer-to-peer sharing options were considered illegal, and the music industry only sold more expensive CDs.

The process to develop a product or service that could be considered a disruptive innovation is a nebulous. There are no guarantees of how it will be perceived when released, along with the impact it might have. However, one can try to create a setting in which disruptive innovation could emerge. Below are three tips that can help.

1.  Be willing to take risks

One of the keys to tap into the well of disruptive innovation is being willing to take risks. However, in doing so, it also means being more vulnerable to failure.

In the Caribbean, where enabling environments that fully support entrepreneurship are still limited, most entrepreneurs and visionaries are eventually conditioned to be risk-averse. However, such a posture tends to be at odds with being innovative.  To limit the effects of that environment on the creative process may require some creativity itself, such as having a clear vision of the desired output, and creating a workspace where that passion is shared and can be developed.

2.  Keep it simple

Although the mechanics of implementing an idea, and especially a “disruptive idea”, might have a number of moving parts and involve some degree of complexity, the concept itself and the desired outcomes should be simple to express. If it is difficult to explain the idea and what its benefits might be, it is likely that the public (potential customers) may have difficulty relating to it, and understanding how it might change their lives.

Additionally, during the development process, it is possible that the original idea could evolve as one attempts to bring it to life. However, through the giddy excitement of considering those variations and new possibilities, which may even modify the initial concept, it is important to remember that at the end of it all, the new and improved concept should still be simple to communicate to others.

3.  Iterate, iterate, iterate

With competition being so stiff in the tech market, the increasingly common practice is to try to release products into market as quickly as possible. The era of long development cycles, rigorous and extensive pre-launch testing phases, and (virtually) perfect products when launched, has given way to considerably shorter and more frequent development cycles, shorter pre-launch testing, and products that are continually patched and upgraded after they have been released.

Further, many start-ups struggle with securing adequate initial funding, and so cannot afford a lengthy development cycle. Notwithstanding any financial constraints that might exist, and recognising the current pace of innovation, the true test of a product is in the market. Hence, there are considerable benefits in being agile and responsive to customers’ needs and reactions, and continually monitoring and refining the product as necessary.

Image credit: Master Isolated Images (FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

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