Disruptive Innovations

Everyone wants to build a disruptive technology or a disruptive business. But what does that really mean? An article by Clayton Christensen, Mark Johnson and Darrell Rigby 'Foundations for Growth: How To Identify and Build Disruptive New Businesses' provides a description of disruptive, and identifies key requirements for disruptive businesses.

Christensen et al. distinguish disruptive innovations from staining innovations in that the latter only target existing customers in established markets. In contrast, disruptive innovations create new markets and generate new ways of doing business that effects established markets. Further clarifications:

• Industry incumbents aren't always the first to market with a sustaining innovation, but they almost always end up on top due to superior resources and high stakes.
  
• Innovations that help incumbent companies sell better products to their best customers are sustaining, not disruptive.
  
• Established businesses move towards the more profitable customers (see above), providing asymmetric motivation for entrants to attack less profitable customers (down-market)
  
• 'Down-market' are typically small and undefined but hold the best prospects for growth
  

According to the article, new growth business has a 10x better chance of success with a disruptive strategy. How do you know if you can follow a disruptive strategy? In essence the recommended requirement is a open, simple, low-cost product.

1. Can you create a new market base?
   
   • Does it enable customers who could not previously DIY for lack of money or skills? That is, can it become mainstream rather than specialised?
     
   • Is it targeted at customers who want a simple product?
     
   • Will it allow customers to do more easily and effectively what they are already trying to do? i.e. Is it fulfilling an existing need/want, rather than creating a new one?
     
2. Can you disrupt from the low end?
   
   • Are prevailing performance good enough? If not, then a simpler product will not succeed.
     
   • Do you have a business model that targets thin profit margins and high net asset turns. Do competitors already outsource fabrication and assembly to the lowest-cost sources?
     

Now that you know your innovation has the potential to be disruptive, do you have the resources, processes and values you require for success?

• Resources: Do you have the best people and sufficient cash? A manager who is radically different from those established with core business who has the correct experience? Are you aware of the challenges the manager will face? Too much cash can allow bloat that weakens the product (remember our tight profit margins), too little and the product may never see the light of day.
  
• Processes and Values: Traditional and established processes can hamper a disruptive enterprise, an independent business unit that emphasises the key values of simplicity and low-cost is best.
  

For established companies you will want to:

• Start before you need to grow, while you can afford it (ie: while your company is still growing)
  
• Create an aggregate project plan with strategic objectives
  
• Train employees to scout for well positioned small companies that will help accelerate and improve your disruptive product
  

A successful disruptive product should generate profits almost immediately, but needs to be cautious to not out-grow your capabilities: new markets take time to emerge.

BZR on Windows

There are a number of source code control options, popular ones include subversion (SVN) and GIT. CVS is on its way out. Python advocates prefer 'Bazaar' (BZR), which of course is a total pain to install on Windows.

The steps are vaguely:

1. Install python (I used 2.6, pretty straight forward, run an exe)
   
2. Install py-crypto - you need this for ssh/sftp (Again, just an exe install not too painful, just choose the right one)
   
3. Install paramiko, this is the SSH client. Once again, just an exe for the ctypes support, and a python module. Again, choose the one that matches your python version.
   
4. Now get bzr and install it.
   
5. Finally, add the python scripts to your path (advanced environment variables), and your ready to use BZR from the command prompt - still no gui!
   

Compared to the simple install, setup and use procedure for SVN I can see why Bazaar isn't a popular choice. I've not tried GIT, but I'd suggest trying GIT over BZR for a distributed versioning system.

Online Project Management Software

Every project requires some form of tracking, whether it is a simple to-do list or a highly detailed gantt chart. At some stage a some formal planning must take place, and if you are collaborating across different physical locations an online tool can really help.

I had a few requirements:

• Ability to track milestones & tasks
  
• Sepecifiy interdependencies between tasks
  
• Track issues/bugs (Ticketing)
  
• A visual display of the schedule (eg: Gantt, Time/Time, or Burndown chart)
  

I also wanted the tool to allow different management approaches (ie: not a purely scrum-based tool), and the usual niceties such as email notifications and a blog/wiki/forum/etc. Finally I wanted all this for free (ofcourse!). The usual suggestions are Bugzilla, Trac and MediaWiki, however none of these provide all the features we needed. Some of the better products I found included:

• Redmine - A free (open source) web application with issue tracking, gantt charts, email notifications, wiki, forums, time tracking, etc. Unfortunately it is still quite 'beta' but definately one to watch for the future.
  
• Assembla - A paid web service with task management, issue tracking, some scrum support, wikis, forums, but no visual way of representing a schedule as far as I could tell.
  
• Clocking IT - A free (closed) web service that provides project tracking, it looks great but seemed a bit too simplistic for my needs.
  
• CodeSpaces - A paid service, but offers free accounts. Easy to use, supports visual scheduling, forums, but is tightly SVN and scrum based (card walls, stories, etc.) and the help was a bit poor. I seriously investigated this option but decided against it in the end, however I can recommend this option.
  
• CoMindWork - A paid service, but offers a limited free version. Can be both online and installed, provides a decent visual gantt chart with task and time tracking, issue tracking, email notifications, wiki, blog, and good help videos and instructions all through making it easy to learn. A big bonus is that it directly imports and exports between Microsoft Project, integrates with BaseCamp and provides an API for import/export. It also has a bit of a plone-like feel, which I was comfortable with having used it before.
  

So CoMindWork was the winner for me. Some of the other promising ones I was looking at included:

• Zoho projects
  
• Unfuddle
  
• Agile42
  

but since I'd found CoMindWork by then I didn't look into them into too much depth.