posts tagged ‘disruptive innovation’

What We’ve Learned at PARC About the Business of Innovation

14 March 2013 | Stephen Hoover

The business of open innovation is something PARC has been continually refining since we incorporated in 2002. Mastering the process of innovation is about far more than developing new technology; it requires a deep understanding of human behavior and context, and the ability to invent new business models to take the resulting products and services to market. We’ve found common themes. Three of them illustrate how we’ve been innovating at PARC over the past decade.

Defining (and spotting) ‘disruptive’ innovation

9 July 2012 | Lawrence Lee

John Gruber of Daring Fireball points out that "The iPhone is not and never was a phone. It is a pocket-sized computer that obviates the phone. The iPhone is to cell phones what the Mac was to typewriters." His point is that the iPhone wasn’t a disruptor of mobile phones; instead, the iPhone was a disruptor of portable computers, and that’s how we should have viewed it all along... and foreseen its evolution into the iPad and its resulting impact on the computing industry. First: a quick clarification. A 'disruptive' technology typically starts at the low- (or under-served) end of the market – not perceived as a threat to incumbents – and eventually displaces the existing market. But don't the incumbent companies see what's happening? Sure they do. But it’s hard to see competition from disruptive "substitutes" outside one's industry, and even harder to figure out what to do about it. However, those of us who work in innovation need to recognize such blind spots and exploit the opportunities presented by them as often as we can.

PARC’s Power of 10

10 May 2012 | Editor

When we set out to celebrate our 10th “birthday” since being incorporated in 2002 as an independent company, we wondered, what was the best way to share some of our insights and experiences in the journey from “Xerox PARC” to “Palo Alto Research Center” to “PARC, a Xerox company”? Given this new milestone, we felt the focus should be on the business models, the theoretical expertise, and commercialization stories – the process behind the outcomes. So our Power of 10 half-day conference and celebration on April 26 featured experts sharing their theoretical and research insights on open innovation and disruptive innovation, followed by practical experiences from some of our clients... Today the innovation landscape moves faster than ever, and there are many more players, each with an important role.

The wastewaters of innovation (literally!)

30 November 2011 | Leon Wong

Billing itself as the world’s largest annual water quality exhibition, the 84th Annual Water Environment Federation Technical Exhibition and Conference (WEFTEC) draws 20,000 people from all over the world and has almost 1000 exhibitors. Because the show provided an opportunity to meet with a wide spectrum of wastewater players -- from utilities, corporations, manufacturer reps, and consultants to investors, analysts, and non-profits -- I wanted to share some of what I heard while showcasing our hydrodynamic separation (HDS) technology platform. Especially because I think the comments reflect the nature of innovation in the wastewater industry today.

It’s the market disruption, not the disruptive innovation

28 January 2010 | Jennifer Ernst

Disruptive innovation is about market impact. No business model or new technology is intrinsically disruptive. It's the application in the market, and the reaction of the consumer, that determines whether something is disruptive or not.