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Play, Learn, and Be Successful
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Disrupting Disruption for More Usefulness
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Ofmos Universe provides the Big Picture foundational layer for a more accessible and meaningful business education, also shining new light on some popular ideas. In spirit of Richard Feynman's “every theoretical physicist that's any good knows six or seven different theoretical representations for exactly the same physics," let's zoom in on the concept of disruptive innovation.
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Somebody disrupts something every day, as the 1995 idea (below) has taken a life of its own. Yet, after surveying industry experts on 77 case examples in two of Clayton Christensen's seminal books, the authors of the 2015 MIT Sloan Management Review article "How Useful Is the Theory of Disruptive Innovation?" found that "the theory has limited predictive power" (9% of cases).
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STEP 1. GET COMMODITIZATION
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Look at the world like a physicist: model it. Use the ofmos lens to see products by their marginal complexity (i.e., what does it take to bring an additional unit to market?) and their value or importance to the user. As knowledge about a product accumulates in the marketplace, its perceived value drops. That is commoditization. Think of it it as the Gravity of the business world. |
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Video: A New Perspective on the Evolution of Porsche 911
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Conventionally, commoditization is the process through which products become undifferentiated, low-value offerings. However, the ofmos lens reveals that commoditization stems from both the natural drive to make the most of one's circumstances and learning. The perceived value is not binary, lying on a continuum instead. Not all offerings become commodities, but all commoditize.
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STEP 2. GET (DOWNWARD) INNOVATION
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View companies as complex systems — portfolios of offering-market cosmos or, short, ofmos — that can be acted upon at their largest scales with 6+1 'big picture' actions. Downward innovation is one of those actions, describing the process of bringing to market new offerings that are based on existing offerings, but that are simpler and thus have a lower perceived value than the source. |
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STEP 3. RETHINK DISRUPTION
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The product categories of those offerings created through downward innovation tend to have higher adoption rates than their respective source offerings. They commoditize faster, with the possibility of eventually matching the core functionality of the "big brothers," but in simpler, more affordable ways. That is when disruption occurs, as the "big" value propositions are rendered irrelevant.
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(Boost Your Performance!)
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The new perspective narrows the scope of disruption, framing it as a special case of downward innovation, thus making the idea clearer and more useful. In line with Feynman's justification for multiple explanations ("he keeps them in his head, hoping that they'll give him different ideas for guessing"), the new view can also open new doors. Does upward innovation prevent future disruption?
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Note: The slides above have been excerpted from Cristian Mitreanu's Stanford Continuing Studies course BUS 93 - Corporate Strategy at Scale: Emerging Thinking on How Companies and Economies Evolve.
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Ofmos Universe aims to become the Big Picture foundational layer for a more accessible and meaningful business education. With the one-need theory of behavior and the broader ofmos theory at the center, the platform will provide engaging experiences that combine courses and certifications, business simulation games, and character-driven picture books.
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New Course on Product Storytelling with the One-Need Theory of Behavior
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