The fifth post in a series of blogs about what Canada (and other countries around the world) can do to promote and sustain innovation.
A cultural shift toward innovation would entail adjusting current attitudes about economic instability. There is a theory that describes this approach, first coined by Harvard professor Clayton M. Christensen, called disruptive innovation. Disruptive innovation creates new markets or reshapes existing ones. It refers to convenient and affordable innovations that are delivered to a niche set of customers overlooked by industry leaders.
There are many disruptions in digital media today. Cameras on tablets and cell phones are becoming so advanced that they will soon affect the sales of digital cameras. The Internet is the quintessential example of disruptive innovation. It has completely changed some industries, and many are still evolving. The publishing and music industries have been significantly transformed by Internet-enabled emerging Web 2.0 technologies and devices like tablets, MP3 players, and mobile phones. When we look at the dramatic changes over the past decade in how we work and play, we can see just how productive disruptive innovation can be.
Canadians are embracing emerging and disruptive technologies. They are spending nearly double the average time surfing than any other of the 11 cyber-established countries. And they’re visiting more websites than their American counterparts (The Stratford Report, 2011). Certainly digital natives, the younger generations that are entering today's workforce, are embracing disruptive technologies.
As these young people enter the workforce, they will expect to use the same disruptive technologies currently flooding the consumer marketplace in the workplace. They are already driving convergence of technologies and blurring the lines between consumer and enterprise. This further increases the urgency to invest in Research & Development in areas like digital media to facilitate the development of disruptive technologies. From an enterprise perspective, this will help organizations to innovate, compete, and contribute to a productive economy, ensuring that they are not left behind in a global economy. From a national perspective, these emerging trends will engender a more positive attitude toward disruptive innovation and drive the incentive to become a digital nation.
Read the previous blog, Part 4 of the series.
Read Part 3 of the series.
Read Part 2 of the series.
Read Part 1 of the series.
