Article
Two strategies for innovating in the face of market disruption
There is no doubt that the kind of existential change required to rise to the challenge of disruption is the hardest challenge a leader will ever face. . . At the same time, it’s the greatest opportunity a leadership team will ever face. The disruption that frequently rips an incumbent apart almost always results in net market growth. – Scott D. Anthony and co-authors[1] There is another approach to innovation that involves “neither incremental improvements in current products nor revolutionary disruption of those products.” Companies pursuing this Third
Way “create multiple complementary innovations around a core or key product that make that product more appealing and competitive.” – David Robertson and Kent Lineback[2] One of the most daunting tasks corporate leaders may face is how to respond
efectively to significant market shifts brought on by advances in technology, especially digitization, and by disruptive new entrants, many from emerging markets, armed with innovative business models. In the coming decades, the transformative developments that we have seen changing the traditional face of retailing, photography, telecommunications and the media are rapidly set to be mirrored in more and more sectors like automobiles, industrial equipment, energy, healthcare and education. Two recent important books have contrasting but complementary insights to offer to company leaders and strategists on how to improve the odds for developing successful innovations in response to game changes in markets. In Dual Transformation: How to Reposition Today’s Business While Creating the Future (2017), disruptive innovation experts, Scott Anthony, Clark Gilbert and Mark Johnson offer corporate leaders a “dual transformation” template for simultaneously repositioning the traditional core business in the face of disruptive change, while also creating new businesses to harness the growth potential typically unlocked by such disruption. In The Power of Little Ideas: A Low-Risk, High-Reward Approach to Innovation (2017), innovation guru, David Robertson, and his collaborator, Kent Lineback, offer companies a “third way” for coping with historic market inflections by innovating around a core product to make it more compelling, rather than having to choose between attempting the radical or incremental innovation of the product itself.[3