Disruptive innovation is a term that may convey very different meanings. As a consequence, CEOs don’t always consider how disruptive innovation can help them transform their business, create new growth engines and develop a sustainable competitive advantage. More importantly, many decision-makers fail to understand that there’s no real alternative to disruptive innovation. The choice is between leading disruptive innovation or going bankrupt. Here’s why.

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Why should anyone care about disruptive innovation? (1/2)


The day before yesterday, I was invited at the Quai d’Orsay, where I participated in kicking off la diplomatie économique. Suggested by President François Hollande and implemented by Laurent Fabius, Minister of Foreign Affairs, the diplomatie économique aims at reaching trade surplus by 2017, not including energy. A number of French leaders were there, including Pierre Moscovici, Minister of Finance, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, former Prime…

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How to sell innovation? (1/2)


Decision-makers are always happy to communicate on how much they believe in innovation. They may : declare how important it is that the company create a more innovation-friendly culture share a few corporate stories illustrating how innovation played a critical role in creating a sustainable competitive advantage, in the past But, paying lip service to innovation doesn’t mean being committed to innovation. In fact,…

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How to develop innovative products that consumers will buy? (2/2)


I’m always suprised to see how much we’ve turned failure into a nessary pre-requisite for success. I was talking to a Partner of large VC firm and he informed that only 20% of his firm’s investments turned out positive; another Partner in Corporate Venture Capital Fund informed me that one typically needs to loose 10ME before getting proficient at investing in innovation start-ups, whose…

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How to develop disruptive innovations that consumers will buy? (1/2)


Leading companies who to launch innovative products often have to face a tough fact: 70% of innovative products fail to find a sustainable market. And, this is also true of innovation start-ups, making it that much harder to get senior management to commit to creating an innovative spin-off company. Many of these difficulties would be alleviated, if, somehow, we could refer to principles which…

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Succeeding at disruptive innovation (2/2)


Make no mistake: disruptive innovation is no magic box. It’s not a question of sudden enlightment or mystical union with nature, but a question of understanding. Understanding disruptive innovation will dramatically improve one’s ability to be successful at it. Assessing whether a given innovation is disruptive or not may be done by asking three questions. The first two deal with consumers. The third, and…

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What does disruptive innovation disrupt?


Defining disruptive means explaining what disruptive innovation is disrupting. In addition to disruptive pricing in the case of low-end disruptive innovation and market segmentation in the case of new market disruptive innovation, disruptive innovation also disrupts our definition of performance as well as established value networks.

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What’s disruptive innovation?


As we participate in project team meetings with people around the world, people from different parts of the organization and people that may work outside of the organization, I’m always fascinated to see how we’ve been able to build a common vocabulary. Whether it’s the term “open innovation”, “incremental innovation”, “strategic innovation”, “breakthrough innovation”, “product innovation”, “market innovation” or “disruptive innovation”, we seem to…