Introduction to The Innovation

Introduction to the Innovation

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 the market, eventually displacing established competitors(Christensen, C, 2018). Smartphone is a disruptive technology that has been increasingly growing and rapidly affecting consumer behaviour, education, shopping and majorly the mobile industry. Growth of smartphone technology is being critical in the field of information technology.

Apple Iphone has been the first widely accepted smartphone innovation where it let people interact with not just a touch screen but with real world on the other side. The conceptualised idea of smartphones changed in 2007 with the announcement of first Iphone. Not just because the innovation itself was implausible; Apple realised that reinventing the mobile technology was much more about hardware, it was more about how the public understood what was dealt inside. It’s all about how the audience interacted with it and felt it under the tip of a finger.

Almost 11 years later, smartphones have started to test the limit of interfaces. Apple is striving to make iphone a compact device rather than a collection of disparate applications, and attempting to make siri the one stop digital assistant like the public wants it to be. Apple was successful in establishing an entirely new sector within a sector, called smartphone, which marked a seismic shift in customer expectations for communications. This brand for the first time made it possible for the customers to access internet anywhere anytime. The effect of this piece of technology on existing key competitors was colossal and insurmountable for few.

Iphone had a quiet powerful weapon in its inventory from the initial stage - the brand name Apple.Apple was already an established and known name in the world of tech, cultivated mainly by the huge success of the iMac and iPod. The brand’s distinct and incredible desirability was already known factor. Even before the entry of Iphone into the market, consumers had an idea that it would be distinct and the early adopters from all over the world agreed to it.

Although the brand was not an established brand in mobile industry like Nokia and Motorola, the challenging factor was to develop salience at the same time keep up the perceptions of difference, in order to push the demand. Even before the iPhone was launched, consumers knew it would be different, and the experience of early adopters around the world confirmed this.

However, the brand was not well known when compared to competitors such as Nokia and Motorola. The brand challenge for the iPhone was to build salience at the same time keep the perceptions of difference, in order to drive demand. Though this distinct start was a major advantage, over the past eleven years the brand has grown to distinctly lead by delivering it’s promise of a perception changing, even life changing experience for consumers. By conquering its rivals and disrupting their existing status in the market, Apple has taken its brand name to next level and has moved from being projected as a ‘Specialist brand, to being called as an Iconic brand that significantly stands apart based on key aspects like Thoughtful, Distinct and Prominent.

Exploration of Adoption Categories

Innovators - Innovators are the primary set of individuals to pursue an innovation. Here no matter the risk involved with the product, they willingly adopt the innovation. These group of people have high financial lucidity and have good interaction with other innovators who also act as influencers. Risk tolerance let them pursue new technologies which may or may not fail.

Characteristics that influence this category of adopter to adopt a specific innovation are :Relative Advantage - Relative advantage is basically the advantage of innovation over the existing traditional methods like the relative advantage of smartphone over basic mobile device is the access to internet anywhere and everywhere. Hence innovators even if they find a small percentage of relative advantage would be ready to adopt the innovation as they have high financial lucidity to absorb the risk effects.

Trialability - Trialability defines how easily an innovation like Smartphone can be tried and explored through options like ‘in store trial’ before committing to full adoption. Innovators are keen to explore anything new, hence when any new technologies comes in they readily try it.

Compatibility - Innovators are always on the lookout for new efficient technologies that can replace traditional methods or products. Hence innovators take risk to identify whether the particular innovation is compatible with their life or lifestyle such that adoption is seamless.

Early Adopters - Early adopters are the second set of individuals who are younger in age to adopt an innovation, and they have the highest stage of opinion compared to other adopter categories. They are distinct in the choice of adoption and make thoughtful choice of adoption as it will aid this category to create central communication position Rogers 1962 5th ed, p. 283).

Characteristics that influence this category of adopter to adopt a specific innovation are :

Relative advantage - Early adopters scrutinize the advantages of new innovation like ease of availability, cost, safety and ease of use of innovations like smartphone over traditional mobile device.

Observability - Early adopters gets influenced on a technology by observation and comparison of the technology with existing traditional ones. For example early adopters tend to observe the benefits in smartphone like easy communication, payments, music streaming etc

Compatibility - Early adopters tend to adopt efficient technology innovations that fits their social life without having to make major changes. As adopters are driven by a product's potential to drive their success, if they locate an efficient technology that can fit in without major lifestyle changes they will be quick to adopt it.

Early

Majority - Early majority falls under the tertiary category where they only adopt a new innovation or technology after a varying time duration. Their adoption time is comparatively longer to innovators and early adopters. Early majority approach innovation adoption in a slower pace, they poses above average social status, communicate with early adopters and often hold positions of opinion leadership in a system (Rogers 1962 5th ed, p. 283)

Trialability - Early majority adopt an innovation in a slower pace when compared to innovators and early adopters. They need to be convinced by the technology, hence they highly support trying the new technology, and only if the performance is satisfactory they adopt it.

Observability - Early majority constitute majority of younger generation, who would rely on observing the noticeable benefits and standout features that would push them to adopt the innovation.

Compatibility - Innovation is widely accepted only when it can be effortlessly adopted into one's life. Early majority need to know that innovation is compatible and doesn’t require additional cost or products to put it in use. Apple’s iPad was a hit in early majority as well due to its efficiency to replace laptop computers.

Late

Majority - Late majority is the category that will pursue an innovation only after a majority of individuals in the society has adopted it. This category understands and pursues an innovation with a lot skepticism and only after a major share of people in the society has adopted it. Late majority have less financial lucidity as well as opinion leadership.

Relative Advantage - Late majority is partly resistant to changes and new technologies. They need to be really convinced by the efficiency and relative advantage of a technology or product to accept anything new and adopt it

Compatibility - Since late majority falls under the stubborn group resilient to changes, they adopt innovations that are beneficial and can be easily made a part of their lifestyle otherwise the group tend to view it as a disadvantage and will eventually lead to failure.

Complexity - If an innovation is difficult to adopt or understand then late majority would resist the adoption. More simplicity or little complexity would let late majority to pursue an innovation.

Laggards - Laggards constitute the last set of individuals to pursue an innovation. Unlike the other adopters, these individuals portray little to no opinion leadership. They belong to the group in the society who are advanced in age and hence display aversion to anything new as they are used to the traditional methods. They tend to have lowest financial lucidity as well as little to no opinion leadership.

Complexity - Laggards are basically lazy or adamant to adopt innovation, hence if a technology is too complex to handle then it would never be adopted by laggards. Since laggards majorly constitute elderly consumers, the ease of using the technology or innovation is a huge factor for adoption.

Compatibility - Laggards are resistant to changes, hence they prefer innovations that are compatible to their lifestyle and doesn’t need a huge seismic shift in lifestyle. Innovations that are highly compatible and would seamlessly fill the gap of traditional technology would be prefered.

Relative Advantage - Laggards are the group who are stubborn to accept changes and needs to see adequate advantages and benefits to convince them to drop the existing technology to choose the innovation. Hence relative advantage is a crucial factor for laggards.2. Retrospective Analysis of the selected innovation

Evaluation of their DesignExAnte Evaluation Method

Mini workshops - Brainstorming sessions can be used where participants can be made to share their possible encounters with existing traditional technology and how they would want it to be improved such that it is compatible to their lifestyle as well as is efficient enough.

Performance Measurement - Completed device features and applications can be benchmarked and their resource usage like performance, efficiency, speed, pixelation etc can be measured using the available development and testing tools.

Device Requirements - In the beginning of the development, list of critical and crucial requirements are laid out. When the device comes to the testing phase, parallel processing of different applications and features within the device needs to be tested to realise the need for extra hard requirements.

Medium Fidelity Prototype - Mockups of the device, initially developed from paper prototypes to minimum viable hardwares can be developed quickly and with less effort. These partially modelled prototypes provide room for evaluation and redesign. These medium fidelity realization allows integration feedback from users and stakeholder into optimised solutions.

Ex Post Evaluation MethodFeedback from Store demonstrations - Device features and working can be demonstrated to customers during store walk in and valuable feedback or comments can be collected so that user interaction and user experience aspect of the device can be constantly improved with each update.Formative Testing - Conducting usability testing with a small set of participants mainly concentrating on qualitative aspect along with the performance criteria of the device. It also helps in understanding the customer interaction with the device.

Guerilla Observations - For first hand insights and reliable field data of customers, guerilla observations can be implemented. In guerilla observations, specific group of users interactions and response to the devices are observed under the conditions laid out by the company if any.

Heuristic Evaluation - Heuristic evaluation can be done by a combination of experts and first hand experts where different aspects of the device like visibility of device status, mapping the device and real world, user control and freedom, error prevention etc can be evaluated and data collected can be used for future improvements and redesign.

Evaluation of original Entrepreneurship and Start-Up Potential

Analyse market trends and collect customer feedback on device - Market trends help innovators to study and understand how the consumers approach would be in the coming and future days. After careful analysis of market the customer requirements and expectations can be laid out for future considerations. Market trends help us understand how the customers respond to the innovation and by providing a platform for customers to provide feedback over existing features of the device as well as what can be added or improved in the future.

Entrepreneurs should depend on customer feedback for innovation and improvement. Feedback surveys can be emailed to customers as soon as they make a purchase in order to record the customer satisfactory level while the transaction is still live in the consumer’s mind. Hence when market trends and customer feedbacks are closely monitored, future development of product, resources and budget can be directed rightly without incurring much loss by getting carried away by just monitoring the sales figures.

Expanding business Online and on Social Media - To promote sales, opening stores all over world would require additional budget, human resources as well as other legal measures for respective countries which is time consuming as well cost incurring. Hence business can be established on online platforms as well as social media where people can request for items through other third party shopping sites or company site.Social media can also be considered as an effective tool for customer enquiries and redressal as community themselves can takeover which will only require moderation from the officials and would be budget friendly.

Introducing chatbots and virtual agents - Chatbots can be integrated in the device to make the organisation let customers to interact, reduce their workload and proactively block customer service problems from turning into major issues. The goal of virtual agents is to reduce the workload on the enterprise and its employees, and so it should be loaded with as much information as possible.

Even Though a major share of enquiries can be handled by the assistant, there can be some instances that would require handing over to a human customer service agent. Efficiency of the chatbot comes into effect in knowing when the enquiry needs to be transferred to a human assistant. Investing a share of budget in chatbots will maximize entrepreneurial productivity and at the same time provide better to good customer experience.

Evaluation of their Application of Business Analytics

Davenport and Harris (2007) definition, which defines BA as “the extensive use of data, statistical and quantitative analysis, explanatory and predictive models, and fact-based management to drive decisions and actions” (p. 7).

Application of business analytics is not a new concept, but recently it has reemerged with immense development in Big Data. Emerging technologies like cloud services and Hadoop enable business analytics to assist entrepreneurial organisations with descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analysis. Companies are progressively being capable to access huge amount of data and analyse them to make informed decision regarding day to day work, innovation support that can lead to growth and advantage among the competitors.

Sharing data internally as well as across the organisational borders drive innovation. This practice might be hard to implement in regulated industries but the capability to innovate using data is highly restricted to data driven organisations. Data with analytical insights has the capability to kickstart innovations to reinvent businessmodels. Organisations with data sharing, data security and data governance form the foundation for innovation processes.

Additionally smart machines pave ways to establish innovative ideas by taking inferences from data and study it with the help of specific algorithms and this helps to replace human skills and carry out time taking tasks allowing managers to concentrate more on strategic issues.Successful innovations are those that carry business processes in par with customer requirements.

New innovation can be easily established if it is in orientation to customers. Organisations without customer data know little or nothing about their customers which will eventually make customers feel ignored or less valuable; Hence it is important to have customer data to be retrieved, stored and made available within the company through data warehouses. Integrating Data warehouses and business intelligence for functional purpose serves as the key to successful relationships with customers by providing quality information.

Business intelligence go hand in hand with knowledge management, it is nothing but delivering correct information in the correct format, in the correct time. The major highlight of business intelligence and its relation to customer relation management is personalization. Personalization helps company to understand and redress customer needs the way they expect at the time they want to. Business intelligence support the different methods of communication with clients, such as email, web, phone etc . Customers according to their convenience, choose the channel through which personalised messages and support will be received. In short integrating business intelligence with customer relation management will generate loyal customers.

Conclusion

Disruptive innovation can be defined as the kind of innovative technology, product or service that revolutionizes the market, displaces the existing giants and create new market value which will bring in a state of disruption with it’s entry. Apple Iphone is one such disruptive innovation that created a whole new concept of mobiles in the market with components like LCD display, scratch resistant screen and mainly the absence of keypad.

Illuminated image sensors that improved image quality along with multiple touch management with wireless connectivity in the camera was considered as an important part of the disruptive innovation that attracted customers for its relative advantage, efficiency, simplicity, observability, compatibility and trialability. (University of Ljubljana Faculty of Economics, 2016Academics like Rebecca and Kin Clark believe that this supply side mechanism for disruption which is mainly on an entirely new architecture rather than modifying the existing one has completely or almost disrupted the otherwise established firms in the industry.