What's the difference between incremental and disruptive innovation?

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We can understand incremental innovation through the work of specialists and technicians. As hikers walking the long trail, experts spend their lives learning, refining and mastering the best practices in their field. Their work is essential, and many nations lack a sufficient number of specialised workers.

Disruptive innovation, on the other hand, is something instantaneous, and most likely to happen when we are not 'consciously' thinking about our product or service. Furthermore, I would suggest that the more we know about our product or service, the more difficult is for us to stumble upon disruptive innovation.

The fundamental differences between incremental and disruptive innovation lie in their starting points and desired outcomes.

Knowledge is the primary source of incremental innovation. By understanding their product and the processes required to manufacture it, experts apply and adapt new technologies to enhance efficiency and minimise errors and defects. Incremental innovation aspires to perfection.

Creativity, rather than knowledge, is the starting point for disruptive innovation. Let's define creativity as the ability to shift our perception of one or more parts of our current strategy.

As you can see from the picture above, disruptive innovation is not about creating something better, faster or cheaper than our current product, but rather something different. It's worth highlighting here that this difference lies not in the activities required to manufacture our product, but instead in the value it creates.

Let me give you an example to clarify this point: The Coffee shop.

It took me a while to stop thinking of coffee as an Italian (mostly espresso) thing. Eventually, though, I realised that I wasn't doing myself a favour and I dropped comparing.

Despite that, I was astonished the day I heard of a coffee shop that doesn't charge by consumption, but rather, by the time the customers spend in the premises. Is this still a coffee shop? Indeed, it is, nothing has changed, but the perception of the value delivered to customers.

Someone in the coffee shop was able to shift the attention from the product offered to the value generated for the typical client. Customers used the coffee shop not necessarily because they loved coffee, but rather because they needed a place to work.

We can define this as an example of disruptive innovation because a 'short-term office letting space in town' is not a better version of a coffee shop. Creativity was at work here!

Let me close by saying that companies need both incremental and disruptive innovation.

Let's work on this together.