Disruption in business is actually not something new but going on for a very long time. In fact, the fear of getting disrupted is sometimes more detrimental than the actual event. For each such business innovation hitting the markets, many more products get eliminated. It started more than a century back when the Ford automobile, now affordable to vast masses disrupted the wagon and carriage businesses, and buggy whips. The best example to justify the claim of disruption fear being more than actual change, is the Polaroid Corporation which got so cautious that it started suffering from strategic paralysis leading to its business lead being completely eroded in the 1990s. Business consulting giant PwC claims that those disrupted usually have longer time to respond than often thought as traditional retail chains had about a decade when Amazon was just taking root. Taxi companies had no real uniqueness so got quickly dislocated by the smartphone and GPS enabled ride-sharing apps. Sometimes disruption can even be beneficial to traditional businesses as the rise of vacation rental marketplaces has simply enabled increase in travel allowing older models to co-exist. Marriot and Starwood merged in 2016 to leverage each other’s competitive advantages. The best way to fend off disruption is to leverage on existing relationships as Honeywell did in response to Nest Labs’ smart-home thermostat. An ability to leverage core strengths is what enabled Netflix to move up the value chain while Blockbuster remained mired in the older industry.

Source:https://www.strategy-business.com/pictures/Disruptors-and-the-Disrupted-A-Tale-of-Eight-Companies-in-Pictures?gko=dd95b

Uploaded Date:21 October 2017

Most start-ups nowadays are simply rehashing older ideas and incrementally adding value to them rather than actually innovating. So, most of these are simply gimmicks to acquire new funds and play the game of entrepreneurship. The real business innovation is about substantially altering the present realities. Apple for instance has moved on from its smartphones only focus of the initial years to its much broader range of offerings on the Apple Store. Netflix and Amazon similarly have reinvented themselves over time. IBM has created wave after wave of innovation, but in truth they were not designed as upgradations, instead were started as separate units with some managing to cannibalize others. They sold their money-spinning laptop unit to Lenovo to further enhance the business consulting field from where emerged Deep Blue. As the organization grows, its ability to innovate must similarly rise and not abate as has been the case with several giants.

Source:https://www.entrepreneur.com/amphtml/302108

Uploaded Date :21 October 2017

Lego’s business trajectory over the last few decades provides a true case study in how necessity has precipitated its ability to innovate at each level. When the company was on the bankruptcy a decade back, it went innovative, saved the company and did very well. Now that sales is back, and the company is doing well, business innovation has again been put as the backburner. Too much growth as seen through Lego’s story can stifle innovation, increase bureaucracy while people start avoiding risks. Only those who are paranoid enough survive because they constantly experiment. Companies whose products are targeted at entire generations are prone to such boom and bust cycles due to the fickleness of this market. The really good innovators explore adjacent industries as Lego did with robots. Another company that had faced a similar condition was Disney, where upscaling did take place, but had its limits. Companies need to learn how to grow up so they get business from adults also, but at the same time must not grow old or irrelevant bureaucracies.

Source:http://innovationexcellence.com/blog/2017/09/19/legos-innovation-lessons/

Uploaded Date :06 October 2017

A lot of traditional giant companies are withering away in the face of disruption. A lot of business commentators believe that these companies have simply failed in their respective business models, so no special efforts must be made to resurrect them. However, others feel that they must be saved as thousands, maybe indirectly millions of people are dependent on them. Famous business commentator Clayton Christensen has proposed the spinoff theory where a separate organization is created by the original one but this one will only work on cutting edge new technologies. Scott Anthony though has proposed having a Dual Transformation. Transformation A must aim to incorporate trending changes to the existing business. Transformation B is about developing and then existing wholly new business innovation ideas.

Source:https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2017/05/24/two-kinds-of-organizational-transformation-how-to-save-the-whales/#15b41b4f21fb

Uploaded Date:31 July 2017

Business innovation is increasingly mentioned in tones which make it sound extremely difficult to achieve. Yet in reality they need not be so complex. The reason why the greatest of start-ups end up disruptors is because they change the behaviour of the people involved. A world pre Google is difficult to imagine while few imagined the smartphone or music revolution prior to Apple. However, Venture Capital (VC) funding is drying up and even less so is Angel Funding. In such a scenario, alternative options are sought, but one that has strongly emerged is Crowd Funding. This has in fact grown so fast that now the category is larger than angel investment and soon may outpace the VC model itself. A prime example to be cited would be of the Oculus Rift which was eventually acquired by Facebook but not before raising more than two billion US dollars in crowd investment. A major advantage of this model is that there is limited cost to failure besides crucial time being wasted. Kickstarter, Indiegogo and Rock-The-Post are some of the best performing crowd funding platforms.

source:http://innovationexcellence.com/blog/2017/07/17/failure-is-free/

Uploaded Date:28 July 2017

Large companies quite often struggle with business innovation. They want to leverage the benefits of a large organization and combine it with a start-up like fervour yet that is almost never possible due to the fact that large corporations are backed up by investors who want a steady, constant return. Career advancement at such firms depends on not having failures on one’s CV while large companies even serve mass customers as opposed to early adapters that innovative entrepreneurs cater to. That is why GE has created a team known as First Build to experiment an innovative, agile approach cocooned away from the formal hierarchy of the organization. First Build is based in Louiseville in Kentucky and houses scientists, engineers, industrial designers, students and amateurs working beside the full-time employees. It pursues open source innovation in stark contrast to the proprietary IP followed by GE appliances and other such large firms. Smart appliances have been developed such as the refrigerator Chill Hub, a Bluetooth connected precision cooker, smart wine chiller and talking washer/dryer. These innovations are not one-off but proven successes as even post acquisitions, devices continued working and technology flourished.

Source:https://hbr.org/2017/07/how-ge-built-an-innovation-lab-to-rapidly-prototype-appliances?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=dailyalert&referral=00563&spMailingID=17682608&spUserID=OTY0OTMwNTk5NwS2&spJobID=1061397788&spReportId=MTA2MTM5Nzc4OAS2

Uploaded Date:28 July 2017

Business innovation in itself is a herculean task, but is further complicated when a loner goes up against the established channels, industry knowledge and assets of the older companies. Thus instead of going all alone, start-ups would be advised to collaborate and leverage the mutual benefits provided by the established firms. This is true across industries- automobile, pharma or healthcare. The kind of all-out disruption and quickfire scaling common at Silicon Valley does not bode well in other industries. A good example would be that of pharma player 23andMe. They had a great IPO in 2009, but struggled later on thanks to untimely communications with the FDA resulting in temporary bans and later on a massive product recall. Tesla took a longer, more patient approach, yet is falling behind in design, so have approached Volvo to address this issue. Even established firms are struggling to cope up with the disruptions in notably the taxi and hospitality industries by Uber and Airbnb respectively. The older industries need to be transformed through knowledge of the regulatory environment, testing protocols and conventional physical assets. Business intelligence provided by CB Insights confirms that there has been a twenty-five percent rise in start-up investment since 2012 with a total of US$ 25 billion spent last year. The new model proposes that startups, established entities and VC funds work collaboratively.

Source:https://hbr.org/2017/07/innovation-is-as-much-about-finding-partners-as-building-products?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29

Uploaded Date:28 July 2017