Kejian 168
Business & Management Resources
Archive for May, 2009
Once the disruptive product gains a foothold in new or low-end markets, the improvement cycle begins. And because the pace of technological progress outstrips customers’ abilities to use it, the previously not-good-enough technology eventually improves enough to intersect with the needs of more demanding customers. When that happens, the disruptors are on a path that will ultimately crush the incumbents. This distinction is important for innovators seeking to create new-growth businesses. Whereas the current leaders of the industry almost always triumph in battles of sustaining innovation, successful disruptions have been launched most often by entrant companies.
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Disruptive innovations, in contrast, don’t attempt to bring better products to established customers in existing markets. Rather, they disrupt and redefine that trajectory by introducing products and services that are not as good as currently available products. But disruptive technologies offer other benefits—typically, they are simpler, more convenient, and less expensive products that appeal to new or less-demanding customers.
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After watching students and managers read, interpret, and talk about this distinction between sustaining and disruptive technologies, we have observed a stunningly common human tendency to take a new concept, new data, or new way of thinking and morph it so that it fits one’s existing mental models. Hence, many people have equated our use of the term sustaining innovation with their preexisting frame of “incremental” innovation, and they have equated the term disruptive technology with the words radical, breakthrough, out-of-the-box, or different. They then conclude that disruptive ideas (as they define the term) are good and merit investment. We regret that this happens, because our findings relate to a very specific definition of disruptiveness, as stated in our text here. It is for this reason that in this book we have substituted the term disruptive innovation for the term disruptive technology—to minimize the chance that readers will twist the concept to fit into what we believe is an incorrect way of categorizing the circumstances.
The Innovator’s Dilemma identified three critical elements of disruption, as depicted in figure below. First, in every market there is a rate of improvement that customers can utilize or absorb, represented by the dotted line sloping gently upward across the chart. For example, the automobile companies keep giving us new and improved engines, but we can’t utilize all the performance that they make available under the hood. Factors such as traffic jams, speed limits, and safety concerns constrain how much performance we can use.
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To simplify the chart, we depict customers’ ability to utilize improvement as a single line. In reality, there is a distribution of customers around this median: There are many such lines, or tiers, in a market—a range indicated by the distribution curve at the right. Customers in the highest or most demanding tiers may never be satisfied with the best that is available, and those in the lowest or least demanding tiers can be oversatisfied with very little. This dotted line represents technology that is “good enough” to serve customers’ needs.
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Demanding customers are those customers who are willing to pay for increases on some dimension of performance—faster speeds, smaller sizes, better reliability, and so on. Less-demanding or undemanding customers are those customers who would rather make a different trade-off, accepting less performance (slower speeds, larger sizes, less reliability, and so on) in exchange for commensurately lower prices. We depict these trajectories as straight lines because empirically, when charted on semi-long graph paper, they in fact are straight, suggesting that our ability to utilize improvement increases at an exponential pace—though a pace that is shallower than the trajectory of technological progress.
Managers have long sought ways to predict the outcome of competitive fights. Some have looked at the attributes of the companies involved, predicting that larger companies with more resources to throw at a problem will beat the smaller competitors. It’s interesting how often the CEOs of large, resource-rich companies base their strategies upon this theory, despite repeated evidence that the level of resources committed often bears little relationship to the outcome.
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Others have considered the attributes of the change: When innovations are incremental, the established, leading firms in an industry are likely to reinforce their dominance; however, compared with entrants, they will be conservative and ineffective in exploiting breakthrough innovation.
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In early stages of theory building, the best that scholars can do is suggest categories that are defined by the attributes of the phenomena. Such studies are important stepping stones in the path of progress. One such important book is Richard Foster, Innovation: The Attacker’s Advantage (New York: Summit Books, 1986). Another study predicted that the leaders will fail when an innovation entails development of completely new technological competencies. See Michael L. Tushman and Philip Anderson, “Technological Discontinuities and Organizational Environments,” Administrative Science Quarterly 31 (1986).
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Our ongoing study of innovation suggests another way to understand when incumbents will win, and when the entrants are likely to beat them. The Innovator’s Dilemma identified two distinct categories—sustaining and disruptive—based on the circumstances of innovation. In sustaining circumstances—when the race entails making better products that can be sold for more money to attractive customers—we found that incumbents almost always prevail. In disruptive circumstances—when the challenge is to commercialize a simpler, more convenient product that sells for less money and appeals to a new or unattractive customer set—the entrants are likely to beat the incumbents. This is the phenomenon that so frequently defeats successful companies. It implies, of course, that the best way for upstarts to attack established competitors is to disrupt them.
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Few technologies or business ideas are intrinsically sustaining or disruptive in character. Rather, their disruptive impact must be molded into strategy as managers shape the idea into a plan and then implement it. Successful new-growth builders know—either intuitively or explicitly—that disruptive strategies greatly increase the odds of competitive success.
Pre-employment background checks and criminal investigations for employers are becoming the first steps to increase protection against criminal act inside organizational body. Since internal crimes such as data thefts are significantly arise in the past few years, and the impact could bring serious damages on organizational life to run properly, especially gaining trust from customers; it is best for the organizational or business interest to make precaution acts of making background check and criminal investigation as part of their recruitment process.
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Employees are one of the biggest assets that could determine the overall company reputation. With employee screening, company can also monitor all possible internal threats that could hijack organizational credibility that possibly making negative impact internally as well as externally. A careless process of hiring can leads to lower productivity level and prospectus earning the company should be achieving.
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Thorough background check will allow human resource department in saving more time and money as well as easier choice in making the right decisions on picking the right candidate for the right job, and avoiding any mistakes due to falsified job applications. Relevant information can be obtained through criminal background checks, past employment and background history information - on a statewide and national level.
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Other than the background investigations for Credit Reports, the background services on individuals drug screening also necessary to maintain high organization productivity. With the highly destructive capacity on human physical and mental performance due to drug abuse, by using the simple drug test kits, organization can prevent any sabotage on employee’s productivity.
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Through the usage of a professional background check running a thorough background check, social security number verification, driving record check, and nationwide criminal record report or sex offender registry search on any applicant before the particular individual becomes a member of your professional team; the organization would also be able to create higher level of comfort in workplace environmental thus allowing for highest potential of growth among all departements.