Innovation: Disruption And Digital Revolution

Disruption and digital revolution

The term ‘disruption’ is defined in the Oxford dictionary as “Disturbance or problem which interrupt an event, activity or process.” The term is generally seen in a negative connotation or syntax whereby for example, the students are causing a disruption, which trajectory leaves the term being used in the negative sense. In addition, the definition of the dictionary uses the word ‘problem’. However, when the term ‘disruption’ is used in syntaxes of managerial purposes or even innovation, the term would then alternate to a positive implication as the trajectory of the status quo has changed and reshaped the future. “Digital Revolution is the progression and movement of the technology from mechanical and/or

In the book titled ‘The innovators dilemma’ by Clayton Christensen, who is known for the theory of disruption innovation concludes in the book that successful business which dominates the industries can easily fail due to disruptive innovation. He pleads for leadership skills in companies as well as encourages competitors and young startup businesses. Innovation for the purposes of this essay has two main forms being sustaining innovation and disruptive innovation. When a company follows a path of sustaining innovation the company improves the products performance based on their customers’ feedback. Sustaining innovation mainly deals with rectifying defects and making the products faster and more powerful. The other form of innovation being disruptive offers lower performance products but contain key features which is valued by the market. It is noteworthy to mention, that disruptive innovation does indeed have more defects which includes less speed and power. Products that are disruptive appears as if its doing everything wrong, born from the need that exists in a niche market that is neglected by the current market offerings. The failure of not focusing on disruptive innovation is often overseen by managers and entrepreneurs, which eventually leads to the product becoming

Managers could dedicate valuable resources to a niche and unproven opportunity which can perhaps at the time of innovations not make sense, yet it can be the future of the company. Examples of these scenarios can be common as seen with the development of cameras in smartphones. Smartphones initially carried poor camera capabilities that served the lowest tiers of customers. At the beginning, the phones had useless cameras and a few people would purchase and utilize these phones. However, they evolved and now smartphones have displaced cameras. Many digital technologies of the same instance has followed as Wikipedia rendered encyclopedia, google maps rendered expensive nagivation systems irrelevant, skype against conglomerate phone companies, Netflix versus a dvd shop or dvd chain stores, amazon kindle against book publishers and more recently uber against taxi drivers.

Managers within large corporations argue that a successful company cannot dedicate resources to a niche market which is too small, unproven offerings and the unappealing characteristics of a disruptive innovation. These managers are of the belief that disruptive technologies do not make sense to large companies in the short term. However, this belief is wrong and should be diagnosed by the managers. These managers do indeed listen to their customers’ needs and continue with sustaining innovations, but