Disrupters come calling

By Larry Downes

We’re accustomed to seeing mature products wiped out by new technologies and to evershorter product life cycles. But now, entire product lines — whole markets — are being created or destroyed overnight. Disrupters can come out of nowhere and instantly be everywhere.

We call these game changers “big-bang disrupters”. They don’t create dilemmas for innovators; they trigger disasters… The first key to survival is understanding that big-bang disruptions differ from more-traditional innovations not just in degree but in kind.

Besides being cheaper than established offerings, they’re also more inventive and better integrated with other products and services. The shock waves from bigbang disruptions emanate far beyond information-based goods and services.

Food and cars, for example, can’t be replaced by smartphone apps. But restaurants now depend on online reservations, customer-generated reviews, coupons delivered through mobile devices and location-based services to drive business. In automobiles, information technology powers sophisticated dashboard systems and, in the not-too-distant future, may control self-driving cars.

But perhaps the biggest challenge to incumbents is that bigbang innovations combine existing technologies that don’t even seem related to your offerings to achieve a dramatically better value. Big-bang disrupters may not even see you as competition. They don’t share your approach to solving customer needs. And they’re not sizing up your product line.

From “Big-Bang Disruption”