Is discontinuous innovation on your corporate radar? - Twelve search strategies that could save your organisation

In a fast moving world, one of the biggest challenges facing organisations is dealingwith discontinuous innovation (DI). Most organisations understand that innovation isan organisational imperative. They learn to listen to customers and constantly evolvetheir existing products and services, continuously improve their processes, so thatthey are not left behind by competitors.The ability to deal with this steady state type of innovation – the constant storms ofchange within an industry – is essential. Every so often, however, a whirlwind blowsthrough an industry – whether caused by regulatory or political change, a technology,or a product, so radically different that it changes the shape of an industry completelyand in doing so puts many existing, successful companies out of business.In the early 1900s the buggy whip manufacturers in the US, an entire city dedicatedto making a supposedly indispensable item, were put out of business almost overnight by a new fangled machine called a quadracyle, built by a young inventor calledHenry Ford. More recently Polaroid, one of America’s great and longest standingcompanies, almost went the same way as the buggy whip manufacturers. The instantphotography company was wrongfooted by the advent of digital photography, makinga number of strategic mistakes in responding to this threat to its business.[...]