What kind of innovation do you need?

Evolution or revolution?

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Innovation Definitions

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Young woman pondering the question -- what kind of innovation does she need?

People use different terminology so let's get on the same page. We follow the definitions published by Clayton Christensen of the Harvard Business School.

Incremental
Defined as small improvements to a product or service. Nothing revolutionary but real steps to increase the value of your offering. This is by far the most common form of development.

Breakthrough
Large leaps forward in perfomance. That could be in your technology or service. Managed properly the dramatic increase in performance of an existing product line can generate tremendous value.

Disruptive
This innovation typically is diminished performance in one dimension to achieve new benefits most often related to simplicity, convenience, and low price. Disruptive innovations are not useful to the mainstream market when they first appear. Disruptive innovation either brings new capabilities to nonconsumers of your product, hence opens new markets or, it provides convenience or lower price to customers at the low end of the existing market. The innovation is likely in the business model instead of, or as well as, the technology. These are rare and result from high risk efforts.

How to tell?
If you would describe your innovation as better, higher-priced, next-generation performance, complicated, it is an incremental or breakthrough innovation that sustains a product line serving the mainstream business.

If you would describe it as simpler, lower-priced, good-enough performance, great leap downward, simple, it is likely to be disruptive. Technical advance leads the main product lines to eventually overshoot customer requirements. Revenues from new and low end markets allow the disruptive innovation to improve as well. Once it intersects their requirements the mainstream market jumps to it. The market is disrupted and the sustaining product lines are killed.

Your need
We'll help you determine the kind of innovation you need. We support each kind of innovation. We'll help you take the step be it incremental, breakthrough, or disruptive. We'll help you disrupt or defend against disruption in your markets. So how can we serve you?