Innovation: Incremental vs Disruptive

Il read an article on Pulse, a couple of days ago, that left me extremely perplexed.

It was so perplexing that i actually commented on the post, and the answer i got from the author left me even more perplexed.

The main point of the whole thing was something you probably have heard a million time. Something on this line of thinking:

Incremental innovation is dead. Today also enterprise should embrace market disruption as innovation model.

Obviously, the one who wrote the article is an organization consultant, someone who sells blue ocean strategy to middle managers with a budget.

Now, i’m not implying that selling strategic models to middle managers is somehow unethical, or bad in any way (it just doesn’t meet my principles). But apart from the paradox of the disruption of your own market, what made me really perplexed was this great distinction made between incremental and disruptive models of innovation.

I mean, what the heck is the difference?

Ok, one step back. We all know the difference. But reading the article i mentioned above, speaking so clearly of a distinction, as there was a specific line that separates what is incremental from what is disruptive, made me suddenly realize something which i was probably boiling from quite a long time: disruption is just a fancy word consultants or startups use to sell their new cool product.

Ok, i’m possibly insulting some of you right now, but please, bear with me and continue reading, and then feel free to explain in the comment why i’m dead wrong.

Let’s start from the very definition of the two different models of innovation. Incremental model implies improving a product. Disrupting model is a totally new product that makes the old one obsolete. Now, in economics this second products is known as “incumbent” (much less fancy than “disruptive”, i know), and is also considered in the “Porter’s 5 forces” model, so we can say it is a phenomenon known for quite a long time.

We could surpass this “traditional” definition saying that incremental innovation is that innovation made by the rules (of the market, of the product), whilst disruptive innovation creates new rules. This somehow goes over the definition of “incumbent” as explained by Porter.

Ok, now the (disrupting?) question.

Who set the rules?

This is the question that is bugging me, and makes the distinction between incremental and disruptive innovation so perplexing.

Every small innovation, every small step toward improvement, is “innovation”. It implies change, and is possibly painful for the enterprise making it.

When an organization innovates it is always changing rules. They could be small rules, like how a small gear work in a car, or big rules, like what should be the relation with its custer, and influence an entire industry in this direction, but change is always about rewriting rules.

We could argue that “disruption” has to do with the impact of the rules we are changing, but you can see, now, as there is no clear line between what is “incremental”, and what is “disruptive”.

What about lean management? Its core principle is “small incremental innovation”, but during the 80s forced the entire American automotive industry to change their processes.

You probably can see now why i don’t like “disruption” and consider it no more than a buzzword. You can implement in your enterprise several cultures of innovation. You can be an open innovation organization, like P&G, or make employees use their office time to think outside the box and develop new products, like Google. But you cannot just be disruptive. This is not an innovation model, it’s just a word someone use while trying to sell you something.

So please, if you are a consultant and se this word with your client, please, explain to me how i can implement any disruptive innovation model in any enterprise, being it a startup, or a big organization. I promise that if you can convince me i will become your n.1 endorser for this model!