Telecommunications companies increasingly outsource their innovation detection and generation activities in order to ­leverage broader external technology developments, while minimizing internal R&D cost. Compared with internal innovation ­developments, companies which utilize outsourced innovation management can adopt identified technologies or products and incorporate them into regular business more quickly. The most significant measurements of successful innovation are generated revenues from new sources and time-to-market.

As already exemplified and discussed in previous articles, our team at Detecon, Inc. has created and established various systematic means of detecting and discovering technology and business innovations (e.g. Detecon’s Innovation Radar, Product & Services Radar). Discovered innovations are referenced to different time frames in which they are expected to take effect in the market.


Sometimes overwhelmed by the complexity and tremendous pace of technology developments, many companies will need to do their homework with regard to evaluating innovations as business opportunities for the market they are addressing. Such an evaluation will determine the impact an innovation is expected to have on the business, the organization, its customers, as well as potential partners involved.


Disruptive versus
Sustaining Innovations


In general we distinguish between two main impact categories for innovation: 

> Disruptive 
> Sustaining


Strategically, innovations which are most critical are those which potentially disrupt established business models. "Disruptive technologies" are a myth: new radical technologies do not replace old ones. They are actually, by definition, new: with their own unique advantages. What is however disruptive is their potential impact on established business models. This is especially true in telecommunications, as this industry is founded on technology-based business models. An example of a disruptive innovation is VoIP. The technology and concept is not that new. However, given the level of maturity of IP technologies and applied consequently to the vast consumer market either for free or for comparably very low cost, VoIP is becoming a very disruptive innovation for voice communication, potentially eradicating fixed-line voice telephony.
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