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The Three Stages of Disruptive Innovation

Writer's picture: Matthew JenkinsMatthew Jenkins

There have been a few interesting shifts in the world of AI this past 24-hours with industry pros and various media outlets ramping up the rhetoric over who's winning the current battle for dominance of this latest disruptive market. China appear to have made a key move on the chess board and its put the metaphorical cat amongst the pigeons that nobody saw coming by all accounts. 


China and the US aside, all of this highlights something i'm spending a lot of time talking about with clients at the moment in "change and transformation". 


The current world we reside in - especially with AI ripping up the rules for how work gets done - shines a perfect light on the three stages of disruption all innovations go through. 


We often overlook or are blind to the 'era of ferment' coming about. A period which typically sees loads of companies (large and small) flood a market in an attempt to position themselves for dominance with an emerging disruption thats coming to fruition. 


Thats exactly whats been going down of late with AI. 


Everyone's in on the game from big company players and industry personalties to start-ups and entrepreneurial ventures. It seems everyone has been vying to bring an AI solution to the market and its all because they smell the opportunity that sits promptly on the horizon. 


Fermentation eventually gives way to a shakeup however. All markets eventually find their groove and you can see the beginnings of a shake-up starting to happen now within the world of AI. 


Big companies buy up smaller companies. Mergers take place. Companies give up on their quests for a place in the market. In essence, the rush for "gold" gives way to one or two key players dominating the market much like Apple and Samsung have dominated the mobile market for the best part of the last decade in the world of telecoms. We'll see that soon enough with AI and everything will calm down and a 'new' business-as-usual will be defined when it comes to this massively disruptive tech. 


One thing we do know though is that innovation never stops. "Change is constant" as Hippocrates once said. 


While the AI market will no doubt mature and it will find its place in the world, something else will come along afterwards that creates just as much, if not more, disruption that this did. 


Humans are change agents. We cant help ourselves. Entrepreneurs, visionaries, innovators... we cant help but get excited at the prospect of inventing something new that once again pushes the boundaries of what is possible. 


When one market stagnates it dawns the era of something new and exciting for everyone to go after and thus the cycle of disruption continues. 


We're getting an amazing lesson in the "three stages of disruptive innovation" right now and if you watch closely, you'll see each phase play out in perfect syncopation.




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