In this interview, Soren Kaplan shares what a disruptor is and what it takes to become one.
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What's the common thread between Kodak, Blockbuster, and Blackberry? They're all casualties of disruption. Soren Kaplan, co-founder of Praxie.com gives insight into what happens when unforeseen competitors enter the market, and what innovative teams should know about becoming a disruptor.
“Disruptive innovation is really when one technology or a way of doing business or a solution in the market disrupts and replaces the existing way of doing something. It's as simple as that, but it's pretty difficult to do or predict.”
Soren explains that firms should not be fixated on becoming a disruptor. He says that incremental and sustaining innovations are often overlooked steps, and that teams need to stay focused on the problems they're trying to solve.
“The starting point of disruptive innovation really is the problem or need that you're trying to solve in the market. The source of the innovation is coming up with a solution that's better and cheaper, but that evolves over time through a lot of little innovations, little tweaks that add up to something bigger. When you set expectations with your team around creating a disruptive innovation, you can lose sight of really what's needed. What's needed is to find a meaningful problem and create a meaningful solution that's dramatically cheaper and better than what's out there. Disruption takes a long time to unfold, and you also don't know that you have disrupted usually until it's already happened.”
“Business Review” is a production of Livingston & McKay and the Hankamer School of Business at Baylor University.