Hello everyone.
Today's presentation is on the topic of disruptive innovation.
Now this is a topic that is quite popular in
studies on innovation, in corporations, in other organizations that are interested in
examining how innovation happens, what it means, what are the types of innovation.
So this phrase, disruptive innovation,
you will come across quite a bit in your studies on innovation.
And this term actually goes back to the term disruptive technologies, and that
was popularized by and written up by the gentleman that you see in this photograph,
professor Clayton Christensen, a business professor at the Harvard Business School.
And there's a definition of innovation, or
an explanation of innovation that Clayton Christensen has talked about before that
we've encountered in this course, in an earlier presentation.
Which is Christensen talking about the fact that
innovation isn't as unpredictable as people think.
So there is a certain process, a certain methodology.
It's not completely a well defined recipe as one might find in a cookbook,
but we're getting there.
So, this definition, this explanation of innovation is something we've seen before.
But then, Clayton Christensen, in a book called Innovator's Dilemma talks about
something that he refers to as the disruptive technologies.
And then, in a follow up book, which is quote was Innovator's Solution,
it changed that disruptive technologies to disruptive innovation,
because he recognized that technologies by themselves may not be disruptive.
It is what we do with them, it's what a company does with them,
it's what business model is created around those technologies,
that make them disruptive or not disruptive.
So he changed the phrase to disruptive technology to disruptive innovations and
then it goes on to describe what it means.
So there's a bit of misunderstanding of this term, the way
Christensen had described it that we need to get into in a little bit more detail.
So he says that disruptive innovations don't necessarily
bring better products to established customers in existing markets.
Right, so there are three things here, better products, established customers and
existing markets.
So that's important to keep in mind.
It's not that, it's something else, so what exactly is it?
Rather what he says is they disrupt that trajectory of better products,
established customers, existing markets.
They disrupt that by introducing products and
services that are actually not as good.
It would seem sort of little contradictory, there are these products,
disruptive technologies when they are first introduced are typically not
as good.
So they're worst than what exists right now, which is interesting.
But what's interesting about them which makes them disruptive is,it has a bunch of
other benefits.
And what are those?
Those benefits are that they're simpler, they're more convenient, and
more importantly, they're less expensive.
So important thing to keep in mind, disruptive innovations are not
necessarily things that are better they actually could be worse, and
they very often are, but they are more convenient and they are less expensive.