Business disruption, disruptive innovations, it’s not new. Established businesses fear for the future because of disruption and how it can, in such a short time, overtake whole industries. Disruption costs businesses hundreds of millions worldwide, so it is more important than ever to be prepared.
Given that the rate of disruption is escalating across every industry, with the help of new technologies and information sharing, businesses around the globe are now becoming more efficient in dealing with it.
So how is it best to respond to disruption? Every business owner with a digital economy mindset has been asking this question. At a basic level, there are two ways on how you can respond to disruption.
First is business owners need to defend any threats to their core business, secondly, they need to identify and explore disruptive opportunities. And it’s very similar to how risk, in general, was addressed long before the digital economy came along; you consider both the threats and opportunities that disruption presents.
In today’s changing market, businesses are changing at light speed. Skills are changing just as fast. Here are 5 questions you need to ask and the things you can do to stay current.
- Are you ready to embrace change?
- How could disruption impact your business?
- What are your competitors doing that you are not?
- What steps can you take to create a service out of your strongest / most prevalent support capability?
- What suffers more breakdowns: our products, our processes, or our people? How could we fix this?
How do you respond to the threats of disruption?
The moment you sat back complacently believing that you would never be a casualty of disruption, you will be forced to respond not only to the threat but increasingly to the very real and painful impact of disruption. In some cases that businesses tend not to respond, but react to something they failed to prepare for. When this happens they react in an unprepared manner and are effectively caught off guard.
With the hope of reversing their declining market share, some are prey to the digital marketing hype. While learning how to better market their outdated products and services, many wander into the Great Digital Marketing Illusion. On the other hand, business owners and managers who are well prepared for digital disruption have armed themselves with outstanding innovation practices and transformational capabilities.
Related Article: How To Do Digital Marketing In 2019
Embracing change and responding to the opportunities of disruption
While change is inevitable, it can be quite scary, but you can survive it and in fact, even thrive amid disruption. You can even emerge as industry leaders if you can efficiently adapt to new technologies. For legacy companies, the threat of competition provides an opportunity for them to become more innovative which ultimately serves consumers better and strengthens the playing field.
Not all businesses that grasp the benefits of new transformational technologies or artificial intelligence and those that do may not find it easy to adapt and change. It can be difficult for integrating and selecting the right tools for existing infrastructure and processes. Another challenge is for employees to navigate the learning curve. Setting aside the resources necessary for major investments in technology alone can be tough, especially for those low margin industries. Finally, it is hard for companies to change existing business models and work cultures overnight, as much as they may want to.
In order to overcome these challenges and identify vulnerabilities and the emerging business models and technologies that can mitigate the process, companies should come up with a strong and reliable business process. Companies should start working backwards by questioning their own company processes the mindset of the company, instead of rushing into new technology solutions.
Business owners need to go the extra mile in cultivating a culture of experimentation, implementing the new models and tools. New technologies should be able to move businesses from siloed, manual workflows towards automation. Rather than combining multiple point solutions that are hard to stitch together, business owners should look for an integrated solution that can unify data management and bridge teams across the company,
Brands have to constantly adopt new technologies and experiment to avoid being disrupted and to remain relevant in the industry.
Here are some tips on how you can stay relevant and reduce the risk effect of disruption:
- Attend conferences
- Send your employees to conferences
- Assess your current technology strategy for the future
- Build your competitive intelligence to identify invisible threats
- Avoid reacting to threats in an unprepared manner
- Identify fundamental disruptive opportunities you can exploit
- Identify fundamental disruptive opportunities you can exploit
Preparation is the key to successfully combating disruption in your industry. If you’re prepared for the future won’t offer up too many surprises and when it does, you won’t be caught off guard. If you have worked hard to get where you are, it may just take a little more work and a different mindset to move your business forward
Related Article: How traditional media is being reinvented for a new generation of advertisers
Rebel Connect and it’s preferred partners can help you plan for disruption in your industry by helping you to change the mindset of your company, help you to understand the importance of implementing processes in your business and to identify strengths and weaknesses of your current model.
If you want to stay relevant, start planning your new improved business model now. The first step begins with you, so start the change today with US.
