How to Champion Technology Disruptions in Your Organisation.

"Think outside the box", "The leadership doesn't get it", "We've always been doing it this way" are some catchphrases you'd hear in most corporate corridors. Isn't it striking that all of those phrases often times get used in the premises of disruptive innovation. While the first one is calling for a new idea or a new way of doing things; the second is about how a potentially disruptive thought isn't being listened to; while the third is about outright dismissal of a new method.

Regardless of which of those phrases or their variants you get to hear, how do we get started; what to do next with your big idea?

We'll get started by looking at what kind or type of innovation qualifies as disruptive; then look at the status quo, as to how most corporate structures, business models and operating models are currently laid out. What kind of resistance occurs when you attempt to disrupt a market or a corporate system? and ultimately see through to glory.

Disruption or the call for disruption has emerged and gained popularity with the rise of the startup ecosystems around the world. Startups like Uber, Tesla, SpaceX and the likes come to mind when we think of disruption. What is disruption exactly, what are its characteristics; most importantly how do you know if you've an idea that is disruptive?

A disruptive innovation is an innovation that creates a new market and value network and eventually disrupts an existing market and value network, displacing established market leaders and alliances - Wikipedia

Oversimplifying this would mean; anything that solves problems in ways most people have never thought about earlier and brings customers closer to a solution than ever before is an innovation. And, as a consequence, it upsets the existing the status quo enjoyed by the incumbents. This situation puts the problem that was being solved in a certain way in an entirely new light. Take the case of how Airbnb brilliantly gets to the core of customers' problem that is accommodation. This was earlier thought to be solved by hotels. In the sharing economy, Airbnb allows any individual to rent out their homes for a short duration. The ability to convert private homes ready for collaborative consumption radically changes the market dominated by the conventional hospitality industry. This is the equivalent of what Expedia did to travel agents. Or in the case of Uber, customers get to choose between car ownership and transportation; the real problem for the customer is transportation and not necessarily owning a car.

In all of the cases above the new disruptive innovation brings the customer closer to the solution to a certain problem than before; by solving it in ways not attempted by the incumbents. Consequentially, it upsets large centralized powerhouses by decentralisation; take the case of hospitality industry vs Airbnb; Microsoft vs Opensource or Encarta vs Wikipedia.

These tweets from Marc Andreessen adequately summarises some of the finest aspects of disruption.

You might wonder if this scale of disruption is possible within an enterprise oriented in a certain direction with a preset vision. The answer is yes, but the degree of tolerance varies from one organisation to another.

Take the case of Apple; Apple was bold enough to introduce a new product line that is iPad Mini that rivalled their own very successful iPad business. Whereas, consider Microsoft from a decade ago, it was incredibly hard to have any idea that's not centred around Windows to see the light of the day.

What can we learn from the two different cases from above?

In any organisation there will be a business model that determines/defines the value chain and the alliances; and there are operating model(s) that defines interactions between employees, partners or customers. The aggregate effect of the operating models fuels the business model. Taking the example of Microsoft, their business model historically relied on licensing and the partner ecosystem; while Google's business model is to give the software away for free and in turn generate revenue out of user data by being an economic matchmaker between potential customers and advertisers.

While business model sets the tone for the overall business philosophy or culture of the company, operating model(s) is about how a certain function is being performed. In the banking industry, for any transaction to be performed you used to walk into a bank, which later changed to ATMs and now it's available though mobile banking. This is the evolutionary change that has happened to the operating model in the banking industry. Or, the ability for customer service to interact with customers via social media vs the conventional "call the contact centre" is a change in operating model.

The reason for touching upon the difference between the operating model and the business model is to identify what kind of innovation would suit your enterprise, industry or organisation. Also, to identify the ease at which you can apply disruptive innovation in these categories.

Consider the case of cloud strategies of Google and Microsoft. Google with their business model of leveraging the internet they'll have a low cost of customer acquisition and shorter sales pipelines. During the time when cloud adoption became the norm for mid businesses and startups, it might appear that Google will have an early mover advantage in cloud compared to Microsoft. Does this mean that Microsoft should try and mimic a similar sales model? In the short-term it might be tempting to mimic the business model of a competitor. Instead, Microsoft continued to invest in their existing partner ecosystem with hundreds of thousands of partners. The ability to mobilise this ecosystem gives the ability to leverage a gazillion enterprise partnerships and relationships that Google can only dream of. The moral of the story is Microsoft did not change the business model in the face of adversary instead tweaked the operating model by changing the manner in which the partner ecosystem is incentivised in the cloud world. And; alas, the partners who were more of deployment partners turned into sales partners which shorter sales pipelines when combined with the power of cloud; read Office 365.

Consider the above examples and categorise what type of disruptive innovation you're trying to bring about in your organisation. Does it call for a change in business model or that in an operating model. The resistance will be extremely heavy and the parameters involved will be a lot more that you'd see or imagine. However, a change in operating model or spawning a new operating model will be relatively easier.

Consider you're an organisation selling on premises telephony software and if you set out on a journey to make a cloud based version of it; you'll find lesser resistance than if you would if you attempt a business model disruption and you'd find a lot of reusable resources within the organisation.

In either of these categories, realise that there will people who'll be thrilled with your idea as well as the ones who'll be horrified. We're at a juncture where disruptions are mostly led by social, mobile, analytics and cloud. This enables you to execute faster than before with minimum resources. In most organisations this would lead some careers to skyrocket while some others plummet.

Know that all this is too much work to do single handedly. Look for your allies, mentors and friends. In the midst of uncertainty and the push to kill a new initiative, they are the people who will be your tribe that keeps the upbeat attitude, mojo and momentum. In the decision making chain, these days no single individual makes a major decision; it is a collaborative effort. Having critical mass rallying behind your idea is extremely valuable in such settings. So; build your tribe, see the best in people, evoke the best in people. Stories of rugged individualism is rare even in the movies. Rocky needed Mickey and Paulie; Maverick needed Goose. Busquets and Puyol makes Messi; Ronaldo needs Alonso and Ramos.

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