What is disruptive innovation and how to apply it in your business

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The market is alive and it is practically obligatory to adapt to the circumstances . Competition is fierce and resting on one's laurels is not a strategy for the future . Companies that compete with each other fight to offer the best products, price, service and so on, but who sets the roadmap to follow? Is it possible to break away from established standards and revolutionize the market?

They say that he who strikes first strikes twice. This often applies to the business world, when a business comes along to show something revolutionary , to greatly improve what already existed or to take a risk with a bet that becomes a success and that was not in demand by the market . To achieve this, many visionaries have implemented so-called disruptive innovation.

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What is disruptive innovation?
Disruptive innovation is anything that creates a new market or value network and ends up surpassing existing products, services or ways of doing business . However, it does not necessarily mean presenting something completely new, as it can also be a product or service that is based on existing technologies.

For example, the steam engine was a disruptive innovation jordan phone number lead because it allowed us to use steam power instead of relying solely on watermills and windmills for energy production. Disruptive innovations are also known as “game changers” because they bring about such a significant change in the way we do business that they often revolutionize entire industries.

More recently, WhatsApp can be seen as an example of disruptive innovation. It wasn't something completely new, as messaging already existed, but the platform greatly improved what already existed and put this communication in the hands of millions of people thanks to knowing how to take advantage of the smartphone wave. WhatsApp was a nail in the coffin of SMS as we knew it.

This term was coined by Clayton Christensen , a professor at Harvard Business School. He spoke of a process in which a product or service initially takes root in simple applications at the base of a market and then rises in an unstoppable way to finally displace established competitors (both examples we have seen have followed this process). And it is precisely from this disruption that new competitors are born.

Disruptive innovation has been seen in many consumer industries , from cars to music to phones. In all cases, established companies were blindsided by new technologies that at first glance seemed insignificant or even laughable, but which ended up revolutionizing entire markets.

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How to apply disruptive innovation in your business?
There is no clear and foolproof method to carry it out. If there were, everyone would start their own plan to revolutionize the markets. However, if you have a certain business and future vision, you can put in place some actions that will allow you to have a clearer perspective of the market.

One of them is to collect data by listening to customers, employees and doing an in-depth analysis of your competition . The best way to understand this exercise is with a clear example: let's go back to 1984. At that time, one of the first Apple computers was presented: it was called Macintosh and it cost 2,500 dollars at the time.

Back then, people thought computers were only good for word processing and spreadsheets. Hardly anyone believed that people would use them for surfing the web or playing games because they were too expensive. But Apple changed all that by introducing an affordable computer with a graphical user interface (GUI) that made it easy to use without any IT training.

This new product not only contributed to Apple's success. It also gave rise to other innovations, such as smartphones, which are now used by billions of people around the world. Defending such a proposition is no easy task , which is why disruptive innovation is not something we see every day.