Disruptive Innovation
Disruptive innovation, a term coined by Clayton Christensen, describes an innovation that creates a new market by applying a different set of values, which ultimately, and unexpectedly, overtakes an existing market.
Christensen, who, among his many credits, is the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard School of Business, first identified and defined the concept in 1995, and, since then, it’s become something of a Holy Grail among entrepreneurs, investors, and others.
Disruptive ideas, processes, technologies, and products-they open the door to a wide new world of business, and human, opportunities. “Because companies tend to innovate faster than their customers’ lives change,” Christensen explains, “most organizations eventually end up producing products or services that are too good, too expensive, and too inconvenient for many customers.”
Conversely, he points out, “An innovation that is disruptive allows a whole new population of consumers access to a product or service that was, historically, only available to consumers with a lot of money or a lot of skill.”
In their initial stages, disruptive businesses, Christensen notes, often involve simpler products and services, smaller target markets, and lower gross margins.
But then, if the concept is sound and executed efficiently, they grow and prosper.
The basic features of disruptive innovation are as follows:
• The disruptive innovation aims at meeting the needs of the upcoming customers in the market. When the concept is first introduced, this may not be appreciated by the mainstream market but would see a gradual commendation by the budding users of the service, or product who would value the change that has been brought about in the product or service.
• The adaptation of the innovation would gradually result in the increase of the performance of the product or service that has undergone the innovation. This increase in the performance would steadily result in going beyond the imagination of the mainstream market of the product.
• The responsiveness of the innovation is seen when there is an influencing change perception of the mainstream market about the value of the innovation. With time, the mainstream market would also acknowledge the superiority of the innovation.
• This change in the perception of the mainstream market will result in replacing and disrupting the existing market of the service or the product.
Basically, the theory of disruptive innovation starts with developing a basic process, which starts as a simple product and takes up the market gradually but steadily. This would gradually result in disrupting the competitors in the market and establishing of the product. A product or a service that is the result of a disruptive innovation has the following of a whole new generation of customers, who find the product or the service to be more beneficial than the existing product of the competitor in the market.
To apply the theory of disruptive innovation, businesses need to concentrate on the target market and what are the basic requirements of common man in regard of the product, which they wish to bring about a change in. Apply easier methods to use the product and aim for a lower gross margin. When people are provided with products of their choice in a user-friendly form and at lower costs, it is bound to bring about a revolution in the market.
Disruptive innovation has resulted in being beneficial for both customers as well as businesses if it is targeted properly. Businesses usually have the tendency to bring about innovations faster than the requirements of the customers, and when a certain product is launched for disruptive innovation, it becomes a requirement for the customer. Proper marketing and acknowledgement of product or service can bring about successful disruptive innovation in the market.
This is the definition of the SLED System…it WILL disrupt your market and set you apart from the competition!
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