What Can Businesses Do to Disrupt their Industry?

A staggering 87% of companies think digital will disrupt their industry, but only 44% are prepared for this potential disruption. That’s quite a discrepancy. So, what can companies do about disruption?

Charles Araujo, Principal Analyst at Intellyx, and Ed Maddock, iGrafx CTO, recently sat down to discuss this very topic, and asked specifically what businesses can do to disrupt their industry.

Charles began the conversation be explaining why organizations must focus on the customer. The trick though, is understanding how to do this, and what it means. It is not about what the customer tells you necessarily, but instead companies must be able to put themselves in their customer’s shoes and decide how to transform their world to give them what they are missing. He goes on to explain that this shift is disruptive innovation and uses two kinds of thinking: systems thinking, or seeing how everything is connected and why process is important, and design ability, which is seeing the world from your customer’s perspective. If organizations master these two things, they can drive disruption and prevent being disrupted.

Ed expanded on the topic and explained that the key from his perspective is being able to effectively change and being nimble in today’s environment. Whether it’s protecting your company from disruption or taking advantage of the opportunity to be a disrupter, if an organization can’t execute quickly, they will not be successful. He explains that this is why you must have the structure and framework in place to be able to not only change, but to also understand the impact of the change.

You can hear the entire conversation below!