Our perspective on innovation

The confidence to innovate

We live in a time of unprecedented change that is disrupting the way we work and live. Companies have to innovate, or else they run the risk of becoming irrelevant. To move forward with confidence, it is helpful to keep a few things in mind.

Disruption brings opportunity.
Today, every organization can be a technology company. New technologies can help every business to maximize efficiency, leapfrog competitors, enter new markets, or develop entirely new products or business models.

Innovation isn't always about technology and invention.
It’s also about ingenuity—re-evaluating and recombining existing assets and know-how in new ways to maximize their value. This ingenious approach to innovation calls for organizations to encourage curiosity, creativity, and collaboration–within and outside their walls.

Innovation entails taking risks, but not innovating can be riskier.
Fearlessness in the face of disruption calls for organizations to be more open to understanding and managing risk. This makes it possible to embrace experimentation and expand opportunities for innovation to transform their business.

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What is Disruptive Innovation?

In this article, published in the Harvard Business Review, Deloitte’s Michael Raynor, along with co-authors Clay Christenson and Rory MacDonald, look at the tenets of disruption theory, its usefulness and limitations, and its evolution over the past 20 years.

The problem with conflating a disruptive innovation with any breakthrough that changes an industry’s competitive patterns is that different types of innovation require different strategic approaches.

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Read the book: The Innovator’s Manifesto

Disruption is a theory of innovation that explains how particular types of new products and services come to achieve success or even dominance, often at the expense of once-powerful incumbents.

But does it really work? Based on research by Deloitte’s Michael Raynor, the answer is yes.

In his book, The Innovator’s Manifesto, Michael lays bare the causal mechanisms of disruption in ways that allow the newcomer to these ideas to understand and apply them quickly and successfully, even as he brings new clarity and insight to the most conscientious students of disruption.

If the purpose of a theory is to inform our choices today, we must demand more than compelling explanations of the past. For a theory to have a legitimate claim on our allegiance there must be evidence that it improves our ability to predict future outcomes.

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Innovation perspectives on Deloitte Insights

We’re continually publishing new perspectives on the state of innovation today. Find articles, podcasts, and other content specifically for your industry that explores how to manage in our fast-moving times.

Read innovation perspectives on Deloitte Insights.

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Report: Beacons for business model innovation

​Business model innovation is a hot topic in management thinking, even though there seems to be little agreement about what it looks like. By using analytic tools that provide better decision-making insights, executives can vastly improve their innovation success rate—and ensure their business model investments generate bigger return.

Deloitte’s report discusses two critical diagnostic tools: Ten Types of Innovation^® and Economic Value Estimation^® (EVE)..

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