How to Think about Disruptive Innovation

Tuesday, October 02, 2012 | 1:15PM–1:45PM
Session Type: Professional Development

Innovation can be understood as the constant adding of value to our existing businesses. Such incremental innovation is widely practiced by existing companies. Innovation that challenges our core business is known as "disruptive innovation": it derives from start-ups and entrepreneurs and aims to capture the long-term market. What happens, then, if we are an established company facing disruptive innovation? Should we design environments conducive to it? What ROI should we expect from the efforts and resources for this kind of innovation? Should we invest resources in disruptive innovation, or should we focus only on the constant generation of incremental innovation?