Innovation’s Uncertainty Factor

Innovators must ask five critical questions to anticipate the trajectory and impact of a disruptive value proposition.

Rahul Kapoor and Thomas Klueter

July 28, 2020

For the past two decades, companies have assumed that they know the disruption playbook. It’s an S curve of progress: a series of cumulative advances as a new value proposition progresses to outperform a given industry’s prevalent offers. A company introduces gradual improvements in a new, innovative value proposition. Initially, the offering is not attractive to mainstream users and established incumbents, but eventually it becomes good enough and then achieves market dominance. Disruption of the incumbent is complete.

This perspective on disruption ...