The ability to disrupt your industry is something you want to possess but fear someone else may already have. The Baldrige Criteria address disruptive change indirectly in several places by asking about any changes taking place that affect your competitive situation, what your key strategic challenges and advantages are, how you identify potential blind spots, and how your planning process detects early indications of major shifts in technology, markets, products, etc.

Having systematic processes in place to answer these questions may help you spot a disruptive change in time to counteract it but none of the questions really explores your processes for developing your own disruptive change. A recent post by Umair Haque on HBR provides an interesting perspective on this subject, using Apple as an example, by explaining “How to Challenge Your Industry Dogma”:

• Challenge products. Offer an alternative that gets people to rethink what such a product can be used for, as Apple has done with the iPad.
• Challenge strategy: Find an area that your competitors are ignoring and become the best at it, as Apple has done with the design of electronic gadgets.
• Challenge distribution. Look for innovative new ways to distribute your products or services, as Apple did with iTunes.
• Challenge business models. Companies protected how their products are used until Apple introduced a new business model: The App Store gives software developers a huge market for their new products, making Apple’s products more valuable as a result.
• Challenge sales and service. At the Apple Store, “the act of exchange became personal, passionate, and interesting.”
• Challenge production. Apple hasn’t figured this one out yet. How do you develop an empowered and engaged workforce to produce high-quality products in the shortest possible time and at the lowest cost? A good place to start is with a Baldrige assessment.

To read more about disruptive thinking, click on these articles:

• Anticipating Disruptive Change
• Be Prepared
• Where to Play and How to Win
• Making Your Organization Adaptable
• Making Innovation Part of Your Culture
• The Next Generation Collaborative Enterprise
• Innovation in the U.S.: The Bigger Picture

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