Disruptive Innovation: Disrupt Your Industry or Be Disrupted

January 28, 2016

You become what you measure.

“Why would we want to connect something like a toothbrush to the internet?”

The biggest impact of the Internet of Things or ‘IoT’ is not the addition of extra functionality to our devices by connecting them to the internet. The value comes from what we learn from data analytics and data visualization to sculpt/mold future design, utilization and business strategies around a product.

Meaning, those that harness data-driven wisdom are quicker to evolve. The bitter truth? If your product isn’t measuring metrics, it will be replaced by one that is. Not because they collected data, but because they optimized and integrated data analytics and data visualization to their processes to better address the problem being solved. Ultimately creating a more desirable product or solution.

Measuring is the first step to accountability.

Example: Why connect your toothbrush to the internet?

The value can be broken down into 3 tiers:

Me:

Monitoring all your own personal dental hygiene routine.

My Community:

Make some of your information available to your dentist or other professionals.

My World:

Contributing your anonymized data to allow experts to better address dental needs across your region and the globe.

The days of ‘one size fits all’ are over.

Examples:

A tailored suit company in Hong Kong now uses 3D cameras to get your measurements.

This method of getting measured for your clothing now takes 10 seconds and provides more data to allow the clothes to be made to fit you and your body perfectly.

Instead of looking for clothes size by small, medium, and large. Be prepared to ask, “Can you please provide this in MY size?”

When undergoing medical treatment, facilities can gather detailed data about you like your personal DNA and genome, as well as your lifestyle activities. Doctors can prescribe exactly the medicine you need with the exact correct dose to treat your condition.

No longer are big companies at an absolute advantage when it comes to creating products. The propensity to develop solutions for customers with a rapid feedback loop and then delivering the product to a massive audience is anyone’s opportunity.

This transition from mass to batch production is key to allowing access for small companies and even individuals to compete. The limited preconceived notions and flexibility allows projects with limited resources to outperform large competitors because they end up solving the problem better.

What can companies do to keep up?

“No decision/change, can be the worst decision.”

Disrupt or Be Disrupted. It is up to organizations to stay relevant or face the consequences in their bottom line.

How to Disrupt: You need to think ahead and think differently.

A business is inherently structured to limit risk and optimize return in the short run. This causes new ideas inside the organization to fail. (Visualize white blood cells attacking a new virus in order to eradicate an infection.)

So how can it be done?

In order to prevent the disruption of your organization it is important to keep the structure of your products or services flexible and outward facing. Moving forward it is crucial to form partnerships with organizations that have experience in consulting and developing dynamic and flexible IT solutions, IoT, data analytics and data visualization.

Get in touch with me to discuss further!