How to increase the impact of innovations

Improving the impact of innovations is possibly the most complex area of study about innovation, and yet this is where one of the greatest contributions to management in the last 20 years has probably been made. This is the area that Clayton Christensen chose to focus his research work. The results of his research are fundamentally summarized in two formidable books: “The Innovator's Dilemma” and “The Innovator's Solution.” The principle behind the ability to generate innovations that are capable of producing great growth was described by Christensen as “disruptive innovation”. Disruptive innovations are those that rely on existing technologies to develop innovations that initially perform below similar or comparable products but have a strong accessibility advantage, either because of their low price or because special skills or knowledge are not required to use them. Because their performance is below similar or comparable products, the initial customers are not existing but new ones. For this reason, and because of this it does not pose a threat, existing competitors tend to underestimate these innovations, leaving it up to the companies that launch them to establish a base in the market. And when this happens, the companies that have launched the innovation begin to develop sustainable innovation to perfect the product... thereby improving their performance in such a way that they begin to attract customers among the lower segments of established competitors. In this way, the companies that launched this type of innovation managed — time and time again — to end entire industrial empires. There are many examples of this. Who doesn't remember the RCA that led radio manufacturing back in the 1950s? It was wiped off the map by transistor radio at the hands of Sony. Current examples are television itself, which will suffer for the next few years at the hands of Internet television. Or record companies, which are suffering through iTunes, initiatives such as Rockola - Internet radio - or P2P networks. Developing and launching disruptive innovations, however, is a complex task that goes against the values implanted in most successful companies and everything that the most prestigious business schools teach... it is Christensen himself who says this to his students at the Harvard School of Business Administration itself! What sane manager would approve of an investment in developing a product that performs below what their customers expect? Or what financial director would approve an investment in a product that has no known customer base and therefore its return cannot be accurately assessed? For this reason, the vast majority of disruptive innovations were launched by startups... formed by engineers and employees of large companies who, disenchanted because their idea failed to cross the corporate wall, deserted in search of venture capital that would dare to finance the initiative. In order to develop disruptive innovations, it is necessary, therefore, to first get large companies and in particular their leaders to know the theories behind disruptive innovations. And then implement new processes and new values that make “corporate venturing” possible.