Innovate to Disrupt – How Do You Innovate to Disrupt Your Market?
Innovation is an essential part of business. It refers to the creative or applied application of knowledge to improve a process, product, technology, system, or behavior. Innovation can be done in many forms and fields. Examples of such fields are medicine, engineering, biology, computer sciences and so on. Innovation can also mean the creation of something new, a modification of something existing or a combination of the two. It is a positive force that stimulates the growth of knowledge and stimulates innovation.
The purpose of this article is to emphasize on three key points, in order to help people understand and conceptualize about eco-innovation and how it can be effectively used for their benefit. Innovation is the creative application of knowledge or new products or services in a new environment to produce or deliver something better. In order to understand the concept properly, we have to know what eco-innovation is. It is the harnessing of all resources in a new environment to advance towards new frontiers. Therefore, innovation is the fostering of the development of eco-innovation, environmental, economic or social systems.
The first important step in order to drive eco-innovation is to identify potential solutions, market them well and then drive forward to implement them. The second step is to apply the solution or product innovation in a realistic manner. The third step is to monitor the results and analyze any negative outcomes. The last but not the least step is to adopt monitoring and evaluation techniques to evaluate and assess the success of the eco-innovation programs and strategies.
The first companies that adopted eco-innovation are Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corporation. These companies saw the potential of using their innovative thinking in providing products in an eco-friendly manner. In fact, these were the very first large-scale companies to use green technologies in product innovation and to profit from it. This was later followed by the other major companies like GE, Toyota and a lot of other companies.
The key to successful application of disruptive innovation lies in its ability to address and resolve two main issues. One is to change the existing market dynamics so as to make it more competitive and the other is to introduce the innovation in an area where it is not deployed yet. In case of an existing market there can be multiple solutions that can be brought into use. But when the innovation is to be introduced in a completely new market segment, then it becomes easier to deploy and also address the two issues.
As mentioned earlier, the best way to address the issues in existing markets is to bring the solutions in a completely new market segment. Now, how would you go about doing it? Well, the answer is quite simple. You would have to innovate in all the new markets. This would include both the old and the new markets. Just think how many new markets you can introduce before considering yourself as a disruptive innovator?
