Wow, I find more useful stuff to post about than I can manage at the moment! Today I’ve received a note from an Open University Business School colleague, Jim Yates from Fulcrum Management, about “Disruptive Innovation” and “Creative Destruction”.
If you know Harvard’s B-School Professor “Clayton Christensen” (see my book recommendation on sidebar of this page) and last century’s economist “Joseph Schumpeter” than you are familiar with their way of thinking. In the last 2 years I’ve written several postings about the idea and possible applications of “disruptive thinking” for design managers. You might want to read a selection of articles from this site >>>
Jim Yates pointed me to a recent BBC Radio 4 Programme about “Disruptive Innovation” with two very interesting guest speakers: Stelios Haji-Ioannou from Easy Group and Niklas Zennstrom from Skype.
A highly interesting remark from this 30 mins. broadcast (listen to it for free via RealPlayer) comes from guest speaker Peter Cochrane from Concept Labs. Cochrane explains the difference between “nowadays disruptive processes” and “former ones”. While “early (some 5-10 years ago) disruptive processes” have been initiated by companies with the means of new technological innovation “nowadays disruptive innovation” is heavily created by consumers themselves making smart use of technological innovation for their own agenda. The emergence of SMS text messages (bypassing costly alternative services) or the rise of Weblogs (both private and commercial) are good examples for that.
What design management could learn from understanding disruptive thinking is to anticipate this “user driven disruption” and reflect and integrate these idea in the concept and creation of new products and services. To a certain degree the invention of the iPod is certainly a good example for this “Design driven Disruption”. And that’s the reason I love to use this in my “Disruptive Thinking” workshops for Design Management Programmes all over the world.
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