What types of innovation?
Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2025 8:23 am
Corporate innovation is commonly understood in two ways: disruptive and incremental.
Disruptive innovation
Disruptive innovation is the most radical innovation within a company. It is the one that transforms all (or at least part) of a market with a new solution that revolutionizes it.
Examples abound, such as Uber, which entered the transportation niche by taking advantage of a gap in convenience, price and practicality that existed between public transportation and taxi services.
Another example was Apple with the iPods in the early 2000s, revolutionizing the way we consume, buy and download music. The iPhone also falls into this category.
While cell phones were already making great strides in thailand whatsapp data innovation in 2007, it is arguably the iPhone that sparked the development of smartphones as the market's go-to device.
Incremental innovation
Incremental innovation is, as the name suggests, an improvement to an existing product, service or process. It is a way of optimising value or modernising it.
Smartphones themselves, as we mentioned earlier, undergo incremental innovations year after year: either in performance or in the features they offer (such as camera improvements, larger screens, etc.).
Levels of innovation
Understanding the levels of innovation is essential to understanding where your company stands when it comes to innovating and transforming your business.
Why? Well, this has everything to do with the steps you will take to structure idea generation in your company.
To be truly successful, it is not enough to simply encourage your employees to “be creative.” You need to direct this creativity.
And understanding the levels is essential to doing it in the best way. Check:
1st level – Improvement
Improvement is the first level of innovation you should consider in your business. That is, it depends on carrying out an overview of your company, to have an understanding of what is already working, but needs to be improved.
Did you remember anything? It's basically the application of incremental innovation in business.
The intention is to map everything that, despite working or being in practice, is not 100% optimized. What paths can be taken to improve these processes, services or products?
That's your mission in this first level!
2nd Level – Expansion
The second level is about business expansion. That is, understanding what new business models can be incorporated into the organization, in search of greater market share, which will impact new forms of income and better growth opportunities.
Here, the company needs to dominate its main market, but have markets and opportunities parallel to its core business that it can take advantage of.
3rd Level – Risk
The risk level is the one that can be defined as the most experimental of them all. It involves the materialization of disruptive and transformative ideas, capable of taking the business to another level.
Here, it is worth mentioning that investment in ideas is often of a more experimental nature. That is, there is a risk of failure.
So why does this level exist? It's just that, depending on the business, disruption is the only way to stand out in the future.
Diving into the third level of innovation often means knowing market trends.
An example can be seen in the major vehicle manufacturers, which are only now showing concern about the creation of electric vehicles, following in the footsteps of innovative and highly successful companies such as Tesla Motors.
Where to innovate?
Once you understand the different levels of innovation for a business, it's time to understand which areas to focus on.
First of all, it is worth mentioning:
Good ideas should always be used. You can define the marketing sector as a hotbed of innovation, but that doesn't mean that a good idea for HR should be ignored.
As we say, innovation management is concerned with systematizing the ideation and implementation of the best ideas. Therefore, the person responsible for the function should not ignore suggestions, but rather prioritize those that relate to business objectives.
It's easier to understand, right? Now, let's understand the different focal points behind the innovation strategy:
Unique area
The focus of innovation management may be on just one area of the company, not necessarily an industry, but on a single process, product, service or even business model.
By single-focus, we usually refer to the application of incremental innovations, which are reserved for one type of product, service or process.
Disruptive innovation
Disruptive innovation is the most radical innovation within a company. It is the one that transforms all (or at least part) of a market with a new solution that revolutionizes it.
Examples abound, such as Uber, which entered the transportation niche by taking advantage of a gap in convenience, price and practicality that existed between public transportation and taxi services.
Another example was Apple with the iPods in the early 2000s, revolutionizing the way we consume, buy and download music. The iPhone also falls into this category.
While cell phones were already making great strides in thailand whatsapp data innovation in 2007, it is arguably the iPhone that sparked the development of smartphones as the market's go-to device.
Incremental innovation
Incremental innovation is, as the name suggests, an improvement to an existing product, service or process. It is a way of optimising value or modernising it.
Smartphones themselves, as we mentioned earlier, undergo incremental innovations year after year: either in performance or in the features they offer (such as camera improvements, larger screens, etc.).
Levels of innovation
Understanding the levels of innovation is essential to understanding where your company stands when it comes to innovating and transforming your business.
Why? Well, this has everything to do with the steps you will take to structure idea generation in your company.
To be truly successful, it is not enough to simply encourage your employees to “be creative.” You need to direct this creativity.
And understanding the levels is essential to doing it in the best way. Check:
1st level – Improvement
Improvement is the first level of innovation you should consider in your business. That is, it depends on carrying out an overview of your company, to have an understanding of what is already working, but needs to be improved.
Did you remember anything? It's basically the application of incremental innovation in business.
The intention is to map everything that, despite working or being in practice, is not 100% optimized. What paths can be taken to improve these processes, services or products?
That's your mission in this first level!
2nd Level – Expansion
The second level is about business expansion. That is, understanding what new business models can be incorporated into the organization, in search of greater market share, which will impact new forms of income and better growth opportunities.
Here, the company needs to dominate its main market, but have markets and opportunities parallel to its core business that it can take advantage of.
3rd Level – Risk
The risk level is the one that can be defined as the most experimental of them all. It involves the materialization of disruptive and transformative ideas, capable of taking the business to another level.
Here, it is worth mentioning that investment in ideas is often of a more experimental nature. That is, there is a risk of failure.
So why does this level exist? It's just that, depending on the business, disruption is the only way to stand out in the future.
Diving into the third level of innovation often means knowing market trends.
An example can be seen in the major vehicle manufacturers, which are only now showing concern about the creation of electric vehicles, following in the footsteps of innovative and highly successful companies such as Tesla Motors.
Where to innovate?
Once you understand the different levels of innovation for a business, it's time to understand which areas to focus on.
First of all, it is worth mentioning:
Good ideas should always be used. You can define the marketing sector as a hotbed of innovation, but that doesn't mean that a good idea for HR should be ignored.
As we say, innovation management is concerned with systematizing the ideation and implementation of the best ideas. Therefore, the person responsible for the function should not ignore suggestions, but rather prioritize those that relate to business objectives.
It's easier to understand, right? Now, let's understand the different focal points behind the innovation strategy:
Unique area
The focus of innovation management may be on just one area of the company, not necessarily an industry, but on a single process, product, service or even business model.
By single-focus, we usually refer to the application of incremental innovations, which are reserved for one type of product, service or process.