While discussing business plans and ideas with a friend today the concept of causing a market disruption was introduced. Reference was made to Clayton Christensen, a Harvard professor and author of whom I had not yet been acquainted. Upon visiting Christensen’s site I found this key concept:
Disruptive innovation, a term of art coined by Clayton Christensen, describes a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves ‘up market’, eventually displacing established competitors.
As readers of this blog know, I am a big fan of Seth Godin. Seth often quotes a banner he saw in Wal-Mart that says,
“You can’t out Amazon, Amazon”
What that means is that you can’t beat them at their game, their model or their business plan. To become a major player in that marketplace you have to disrupt the market and cause a shift. If you think of companies that have made it big in the last 5 years I doubt you will think of any that are following an old business model or operating under and aged paradigm. To make it big a company must shift the market through innovative ideas and brilliant execution. It certainly isn’t easier, but it’s certain to be a short cut.
Consider this concept in your job or in a relationship. If you truly want to get things to the next level can you really expect to get there by doing the same old thing? ‘If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got’.
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