The Alchemy of Disruptive Innovation

What’s keeping the CEOs awake at night, these days? You guessed it right. Leaders across the geographies and industries are overwhelmed by the profound changes in technology, cost structures, next-gen services, business models, markets and customer behavior. They are under intense pressure, struggling to keep pace with change, defend their vulnerable business models and market share while pursuing new growth opportunities.

Perplexing it is, as, each moment, someone somewhere is quietly working on intuitive and real time innovations that can virtually create new markets by discovering new categories of customers. Harnessing new technologies, developing new business models and exploiting old technologies in new ways, they are toppling the market leaders.

This is significant, as the topple rate, a degree of how rapidly companies lose their leadership position, has increased by almost 40 percent in last few decades. Besides, the average job tenure for the CEO of a Fortune 500 company has halved from ten years in 2000 to less than five years today. Likewise, the tenure of companies on the S&P 500 was 61 years in 1958; it’s now 18 years.

Disruptive start-ups are driving corporate reinvention. No industry is immune to this. Some of the notable category disruptors include: classified ads (Craigslist), long distance calls (Skype), record stores (iTunes), research libraries (Google), local stores (eBay), taxis (Uber) and newspapers (Twitter).

Faced with the innovator’s paradox, the industry leading incumbents are finding it tough to choose between holding onto an existing market or to capturing new markets. Many of the world's largest corporations are scrambling to transform and reinvent their businesses as lean disruptors are tapping into shared business models, efficient cloud, analytics, predictive insights and socially influenced consumers to create new value and client experiences.

The good news is progressive leaders are reinventing the way they engage more intimately with customers and make their products and services more accessible and available through all channels of interaction. Continually challenged to disrupt, innovate and respond to an ever-changing set of business dynamics and economic conditions, forward thinking C-suite leaders are scouting for strategic partners to manage disruption, innovate and meet change head on.

For instance, when it comes to the future of work they are focused on adapting to the changes which are impacting the way we work and live.  Emergence of new social technologies, a shift to the cloud, rise of millennials as the majority workforce and increased mobility of work is driving the same.

The result is increased employee engagement, a more collaborative innovation culture for staff to explore and accelerate the client value rooted in rapid design thinking and fluid work spaces for a cross pollinating ideas from a diverse workforce driven by a solution centric, user centric approach. Many smart organizations are already pushing the boundaries in design thinking, flattening hierarchies, rapid prototyping, productivity efficiency, and user satisfaction to accelerate their innovation journey.

In the disruptive age we are in, the gospel of thinking is no longer business as usual. To succeed and thrive, we need to collectively think out of the box as differentiation rules. And differentiation comes from the way people think. And, only the right talent will ensure that you are always on the right side of the change.

The power to transform one’s business and stay ahead of the game lies inherent.

IT’s all about people, you see. And, more importantly, it’s the ability to think different. Such creativity is not a genetic predisposition, but is an active endeavour with strong cognitive trait of association, passionate questioning, intense observing, diverse networking, and continual experimenting.

To sail smart in today’s turbulent times, leaders must vie for revolution in thinking: experimenting with a steady stream of disruptive strategies and game-changing solutions to stay ahead of the game, making bold moves, consistently differentiating, even at the very peak of their success, even when, they are not pushed into a corner. Shunning complacency, they need to stay hungry for change, and challenge the status quo, wherever they are, and whatever they do, to add value to clients, business and society.

At some time, someone somewhere is going to disrupt your entire industry. There is no reason why it shouldn’t be you? Who knows the next Steve Jobs could be your grass-root employee, silently working with your customer.

Are we ready to tap the exponential value?

The Blogger is Kiran Kumar Yellupula:  The views expressed here are purely personal. Please share your feedback at mediavalue@yahoo.com