What is Disruptive Challenges©?
Disruptive Challenges© is a unique service that monitors technologies from disparate industries to identify "disruptive technologies" that can cause debilitating issues in a client’s business.

What is a Disruptive Technology?
A disruptive technology is one that can cause basic changes in a way the market functions and consumers behave. Disruptive technologies can have far reaching consequences that alter the basic economic rules and the competitive landscape of an industry or product category. The disruptive technology oftentimes moves through the market like a brushfire, causing chaos and bringing new opportunities to those that are paying attention and have planned for the disruption.

How does a Disruptive Technology surface so quickly and without warning?
Actually, most disruptive technologies have been developing for a quite a while before they appear in a particular industry’s competitive arena. They most likely have been have been reported in technical and trade journals. Patents protecting the new technology are frequently a matter of public record with the United States Patent and Trademark Office long before they appear in the public domain as a product.

So if the disruptive technology has been in the public domain for awhile, why does it come as a surprise to many businesses? This happens mainly for three reasons:

• Firstly, most managers are overworked, overwhelmed and focused on solving the latest, most serious crisis. This leaves almost no time to think ahead about developing threats to the current business.
  
• Secondly, most organizations have reduced headcount and streamlined their organizations to the point that there is no left one in the company responsible for monitoring obscure technical threats to the business. Traditionally that would have been someone in the R&D, Engineering, or Competitive Intelligence departments. However, almost all of these departments in today’s environment are operating on reduced budgets and headcounts. Usually the first information about a disruptive technology trickles in from the Sales department; that’s often too late to react to an unexpected, significant technology-based competitive threat.
  
• The third -- and most critical -- reason disruptive technologies seem to explode on the business scene is that they usually are developed in a totally different industrial segment. Its potential is realized by a competitor or entrepreneur and is then quietly imported into your business segment.

What can be done to address unexpected, Disruptive Technology threats?
You can avoid becoming a casualty of disruptive technology by utilizing our unique, proprietary Disruptive Challenges© service. Disruptive Challenges© uses an extensive network of world class experts, numerous knowledge databases, leading edge strategic technical insights and innovative thought processes to look across a broad range of disparate industries to identify, monitor and forecast technologies that can cause disruptions in your business. Additionally, Disruptive Challenges© also allows you to get "ahead of the curve" so that you can exploit new technology developments to your benefit.
Disruptive Challenges© is offered as a one-time analysis or an ongoing subscription service to monitor potential technology threats and report to you in a comprehensive, tailored manner to meet your needs.

Innovation Spectrum™ offers a number of services to help your company:

• Product and Package Innovation and Development
• Developing Critical Consumer and Technology Insights and Linkages
• Strategic Planning for Product and Package Development
• Enhancing Organizational Innovation Effectiveness
• Technology Scouting©
• Technology Reformatting©
• Disruptive Challenges©

Please contact us for more information on how we can help your company prosper.