Disruptive Innovation -Why Creativity isn't Enough and What Else are Needed

The later part of the previous century and the first two decades of the 21st century are marked by massive disruptions in all walks of life. While this history is replete with wars, civil strife, and pandemics, the strong currents of disruptions have always been part of our lives. So close we are to them that we don’t think ‘disruptions’ unless we pause and take a step out from what we call life.

Innovation is the spark that fires disruption. Any dramatically different way of doing things or doing entirely new things is disruption. Recording and storing music or videos was itself a disruption. These were new activities for us. Recording these media digitally instead of the analog way was also a disruption. Storing media on vinyl, cassette tapes, CDs and flash drives are all examples of disruption that enabled different ways of doing things. Streaming music and videos instead of storing them is yet another different way of listening to music or watching videos.?

All above new things or new ways of doing things opened opportunities for new businesses which disrupted the markets.

Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business School Professor, the architect of and the world's foremost authority on disruptive innovation, defined disruptive innovation as something that creates a new market or a value network that eventually ends up disrupting existing markets and players.

Triggers for innovation

Wars, scientific endeavors, natural events and calamities, cultural and social forces, large-scale migrations, and climate change can trigger innovation. Both the world wars and even the cold war spurred defense industries to innovate. Space exploration sparked discoveries and new technologies. Climate change is forcing innovation in energy sources, generation, and storage.?

Availability of new technologies like powerful microprocessors and other digital processors in highly compact and energy-efficient forms, radio waves and optical fibers, biomedical technologies, drug discoveries, and information technologies unleashed countless new things or new ways of doing things. New industries were born and some of the old industries became extinct.

Business forces trigger innovation supported by production and information processing and communication technologies. As the technological, social, cultural, and geopolitical landscapes became more challenging to navigate, businesses recognized the need for concentrating on a few things they knew well and did well. This led to a disruptive paradigm of outsourcing activities that are best done by specialist agencies.

IT services like application development and implementation, product development, and customer support activities are being outsourced to specialist companies. A whole new segment of professional services companies came into existence. These companies execute various technical projects on behalf of their customers and earn revenues. New ways of doing the project business are sparking innovation in the professional services automation space.

As competition for professional services projects like Tech services becomes fiercer and as the ML \ AI technologies mature and become widely available this space is likely to witness disruptive innovation.

Engines of innovation

A spark is not enough to give light. Similarly, innovative ideas alone can’t disrupt things. Technologies must be mastered. Creative minds need to be brought together in teams that flesh out the ideas, test them, and build products, services, and solutions based on them. They need to be taken to potential customers and implemented successfully. All this needs capable leadership which builds and sustains such organizations.?

The culture of innovation can’t be built on creativity alone. It needs the rigorous approach of cycles of experimentation, testing, observation, analysis, and improvement. It also needs enterprise platforms that support innovation. Only organizations that invest in talent and such platforms can thrive on disruptive innovation.

About the Author: This article is provided by Shivani Kumar, Co-Founder & Head of Marketing of ProductDossier, a company having a flagship product TouchBase - An Integrated Project Management Software. TouchBase helps customer in achieving Business Automation & Excellence.