Apart from areas such as creating game-changing customer experiences and business longevity, one of the strongest reasons for building a culture of innovation is that in a fast paced world your disruptor could come from anywhere. The vast majority of businesses admit that they are looking for new markets so you can’t sit secure in the knowledge that you know all your competitors; because you don’t. In fact, your greatest rival tomorrow may not even be in business today.
We are seeing evidence of this all the time. Comet, Woolworths and Blockbusters may be no more but there are plenty of other business sectors facing threats to the status quo. Just look at the London taxi scene for example. Whatever you think of Uber, they have come into the marketplace with an entirely new business model. In fact, a recent court ruling that the Uber app does not break the law was partly based on the fact that as the app depends on GPS signals and contains other new tech characteristics for calculating fares it cannot be seen to be a taxi meter and therefore does not fall foul of current legislation relating to minicabs.
In a way, when you come fresh to a marketplace it is easy to see how things could be different. After all, there are no legacy systems or ingrained processes holding you back. Building a culture of innovation which opens up collaboration and draws in customers and other third parties helps to break the deadlock enabling companies to move forward so that rather than fearing the disruptors they become the disruptors.