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Prof Diploma in Disruptive Innovation

DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION

Competing in the age of digital disruption
Business is changing faster than ever as more and more creative innovations enter the market and make profound changes. Creative destruction is now coming from Big Tech companies, and there are more Unicorn start-ups (1 billion Dollars +) arriving than ever before. The older established S&P 500 companies are decreasing ever more quickly and are being replaced by Big Tech arrivals. The message for established businesses is clear – catch up quickly or be pushed aside. In this course you wlll study the following topics week by week:

What is Disruption?
The Incumbents’ Dilemma – the case of the minimills
Football industry – thinking outside the box to survive
Changing Competitive Environments
Innovation, Open Innovation and Disruption
War on the platforms – what is the art of winning?
Winning Ecosystems & The Case of Amazon
Succeeding in the long term – the winning strategies
Jugaad Innovation – lessons that can be learned

We are living in an age of disruption.
Businesses must consider and devise new ways of capturing value. But, first, they need to determine where that value is created! Business model innovation may no longer be the way to sustain competitive advantage. Instead, industries are collapsing into larger ecosystems that span the boundaries separating markets. Competitors appear from entirely different industries, and for the incumbent business to modify their business model to give better service, more features or offer the best price might not be enough anymore.

There have been Tech industries entering new markets.
We need business models that are scalable and agile. This dynamic poses severe challenges for incumbents. Success in this volatile environment requires a thorough understanding of what disruption is, how to deal with it, and, even more importantly, how and when to disrupt others. This programme brings together cutting-edge research insights on disruptive innovations and practitioner experiences to navigate this complexity.

Watch the video on the course

ENROLL
WHAT IS DISRUPTION?

Not all innovations are disruptive, even if they are revolutionary.This class will define what disruption looks like in its various forms and will explore and learn common disruption strategies of the past and how they have infuenced future innovations.  The pressures of maintaining a current market position often inhibit challenging disruptive innovations when they arise. Often the incumbent is happy to see a disruptive innovator enter to take care of unprofitable customers at the lower end. If the incumband does not stand and fight, research has shown that they will eventually lose all of their markets.

INCUMBENTS’ DILEMMA

Think Nokia, Kodak, and Blockbuster. These companies are all victims of disruption in their markets. When companies face a disrupter, their natural response is to fight fire with fire, often reconfiguring their business models when they should be looking at new ecosystems. There are many paths to take, and we will examine a few in this session.

CHANGING COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENTS

How can you change the competitive environment you are in? How did Fujifilm successfully transition to a successful health company while Kodak went bankrupt? We will look at the Thomson Corporation in Canada, which sold its newspaper business in the 1990s and invested in information services through a merger with Reuters as they saw the future challenges in the print media – what lessons can be learned?

INNOVATION, OPEN INNOVATION AND DISRUPTION

Existing companies can play to their strengths. For example, consider the strategy of Disney. Instead of competing with the new streaming services, Disney built on its proven strengths in moviemaking, buying Pixar and Marvel (and in 2012, Lucasfilm) and creating a string of blockbuster hits. Amazon and Netflix also recognise the need to produce their content because being a streaming platform for others’ content is not sustainable.

WAR ON THE PLATFORMS – THE WINNING FORMULA

The future strategy of companies must be built around addressing multisided markets. For example, Amazon is the largest e-commerce retailer in the US and the world’s largest provider of cloud computing services. Like Amazon, Apple manufactures its hardware products and has a two-sided consumer and supplier platform. Both companies try to manage the end-to-end experience for customers, yet no one does it quite like Apple. By building a cross-device and cross-service experience to offer a more unified experience to both users and developers, Apple has developed a ‘lock-in’ to the ecosystem, which provides a substantial competitive advantage. We will discuss Apple, Amazon and Google in this section.

WINNING ECOSYSTEMS – THE CASE OF AMAZON 

What does it take to build the ideal ecosystem with a sustained competitive advantage? What are the future trends in the automotive industry? We will look at the possible disruptive innovations and where they are likely to come from as we discuss artificial intelligence and the internet of things to build a picture of the connected car of the future.

BUSINESS MODEL INNOVATIONS

A business model is a document or strategy which outlines how a business or organisation delivers value to its customers. Business model innovation, then, describes how an organisation adjusts its business model. Often, this innovation reflects a fundamental change in how a company delivers value to its customers, whether through the development of new revenue streams or distribution channels. But is this enough? Kodak adjusted its business model when digital cameras became popular. When Kodak realised that digital cameras were themselves disrupted by mobile phones, it was too late! Why did Kodak not embrace the new digital technologies when they had invented the digital camera?

JUGAAD INNOVATION

Jugaad is a Hindi word that loosely translates as “the gutsy art of overcoming harsh constraints by improvising an effective solution using limited resources.” Jugaad innovators are modern-day alchemists who transmute adversity into opportunity and, in so doing, create value for their organisations and communities. What makes Jugaad innovators so adept at innovating faster, cheaper, and better? The answer lies in their unique mindset — characterised by two key attributes: adaptability and inclusivity. The Jugaad mindset and its associated principles and practices are increasingly relevant for companies worldwide seeking to grow in an increasingly complex and resource-constrained business environment. Jugaad is a “bottom-up” innovation approach that provides organisations in both emerging and developed economies the key capabilities they need to succeed in a hypercompetitive and fast-moving world: frugality, inclusivity, collaboration, and adaptability.

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COURSE FACTS

1 HOUR 1 NIGHT PER WEEK

Lectures are run live online one hour per week. They are recorded so you watch them later or if you miss a class. The course lasts for 8 weeks. 

NO EXAMS

There are just postings you have to do on a forum. Each question a question for discussion is posted, you only have to comment. 

COLLABORATION

Our dialogic approach means we want you to study with other, help each other out and network. 

COST

This is a subsidised course. The usual price is €800, but discounted price is €195 if booked before 25th Feb. 
Next start 1st March 2023.

Some of the case studies you will cover

DELL

Learn how this technology corporation disrupted the PC industry and its incumbents by cutting out the middlemen (distributors, resellers and wholesalers) and selling directly to the end-user.

VISA

Is the credit card industry under threat from Big Tech companies? Will Stripe, Apple, Google and WeChat fundamentally change how we pay for goods? What should the credit companies do right now?

AMAZON

Amazon is seen as so disruptive that they have managed to make you think their services are for free. They have also redefined online shopping and created an ecosytem that can cater for alomost everything you need. 

APPLE

How did Apple end up being the world’s largest watchmaker? What can Apple teach business about disruption? Apple has combined a platform and an ecosytem that has propelled its growth to one of the largest and most profitable companies on the planet.

Case studies in this diploma

A quick overview of the diploma