Reinvent for Long Wave of Growth—winning the race for leveraging disruptive technologies

There is a saying, “don’t reinvent the wheel.” Ironically, a long wave of growth unfolds due to the reinventing existing matured products. Besides, due to the reinvention, economic prosperity migrates across the boundaries of firms and nations. Consequentially, Startups grow as mega-corporations, and the economy experiences long waves of growth through transformation.

 For example, due to the steam engine’s reinvention, a wave of growth unfolded over 80 years, forming the 2^nd industrial revolution. On the other hand, the epicenter of radio, television, and many other consumer electronics migrated from the USA and Europe to Japan due to reinvention. Besides, Apple has been sustaining a long wave of growth over the last 20 years due to its success in reinventing portable music players, music distribution, and mobile phone handsets.      

Reinvention refers to redesigning a matured product by changing the old technology core to an emerging one and refining it to turn it into a creative wave of destruction. For example, the automobile is being reinvented by replacing an age-old internal combustion engine and liquid fuel with electric motor and battery technology. Similarly, Steve Jobs reinvented portable music players by changing the magnetic and optical disks with digital audio (MP3), disk storage, and downloading of content. Spotify reinvented it through streaming. Similarly, Netflix succeeded by reinventing video distribution.     

Due to the immense power of reinvention to unleash a long wave of growth and migrating Innovation epicenters, there has been a winning race for leveraging Disruptive technologies. Consequently, new terms and phrases like digital disruption, AI disruption, and disruptor have baffled us.

Despite the proven success, there has been an enormous challenge to leverage reinvention. Hence, this article sheds light on challenges and means to manage them to tap into the possibility of prosperity out of reinventing ‘the wheel’ (goods and services). 

Keywords: Reinvent, Long Wave, Growth Wave, Leveraging technologies, Disruptive technologies, Disruptive technology examples, Disruptor, AI disruption, Digital disruption, Technology disruption, Reinvent the wheel, Creative wave of destruction, and Technology core

Key takeaways

• Reinventing is at the core of the evolution of products in the expanding market as a long wave of wave of creative destruction. However, such an opportunity is fraught with pervasive possibilities.
• Due to reinvention, prosperity has been growing as long waves; however, due to the unleashing of reinvention as a creative wave of destruction, innovation epicenters of significant products and processes have been migrating across the boundaries of firms and nations, causing rise and fall.
• We need technologies with latent disruptive possibilities and proper timing to fuel reinvention to ensure resonance between multiple forces. Besides, winning the competition is highly important to profiting from reinvention.    

Reinventing success examples

• Industrial revolutions—reinvention of energy production led to the redesign of factories and transportation. Steam engines took over the role of horses, resulting in playing a crucial role in laying the rail network. On the other hand, once the steam engine started rotating factory wheels, production quality started rising, and costs kept falling. Due to the reinvention of energy production, a long wave of economic growth was unleashed from 1760 to 1870, forming the Industrial Revolution. Along the way, UK-led Europe became the epicenter of global industrial production. Similarly, at the end of the 19^th century, mechanical industrial machines and consumer products became targets of reinvention due to the development and advancement of electrical motors and internal combustion engines. Subsequently, the second industrial revolution unfolded (from 1870 to 1950), offering another long wave of growth. The 3^rd industrial revolution unfolded due to its success in inventing semiconductors and leveraging them to reinvent an array of products. At the dawn of the 21^st century, the advent of intelligent machine technology core has been knocking another wave of reinvention and a long wave of economic growth.   

• Migration of prosperity from Europe to America— As the USA played the leading role in the electrical machine age by reinventing mechanical products and processes, prosperity migrated from Europe to the USA. Subsequently, the USA rose further as they led the reinvention wave, unleashing the 3^rd industrial revolution. Consequentially, the prosperity gap between the USA and Europe kept growing during the last 125 years. 

• Rise of Japan—To many of us, the rise of Japan and Japanese firms appears surprising. How Japan has gained an innovation edge in products invented by others is a big question. More importantly, how have Japanese consumer electronics products risen from an inferior beginning and taking over the edge of the USA and Europe? The answer lies beneath the success of Japanese firms in leveraging semiconductor technology to reinvent radio, television, cameras, and many other consumer electronics products. Due to their focus on R&D for disruptive technology refinement, Japanese companies created a long wave of growth due to the accumulation of a systematic Flow of Ideas. As Japanese companies won the race to reinvent consumer electronics, innovation epicenters of many American and European inventions migrated to Japan. 

• Rise and fall of firms—due to the race to win the reinvention race and the failure of incumbent high-performing firms profiting from matured products to join the race at the right time, many American and European firms fell. Notable examples include RCA, Zenith, Kodak, and many more. On the other hand, Japanese firms rose because they focused on reinventing.

• Startups are taking over behemoths. Due to driving the reinvention wave and winning the race, tiny startups like Sony, Intel, Microsoft, Apple, and many more rose, and some of them became trillion-dollar companies. In contrast, behemoths like Kodak, DEC, and IBM suffered from destruction.

Reinventing challenges

• Disruptive technologies—for fueling the reinvention wave as a creative wave of destruction, the role of the disruptive technology cores is essential. Notable examples are transistors, microchips, LCD, OLED, PC, graphical user interface, multitouch, LED, database engine, and many more. Surprisingly, all of them begin in primitive form. In the beginning, their potential remains latent. As a result, many high-performing companies with solid competencies tend to avoid them.

• Loss-making beginning—invariably, reinvention waves begin the journey at a loss. Besides, they are rejected by mainstream customers due to their inferiority to mature alternatives. Hence, justifying the pursuit of loss-making at the beginning of reinvention is an issue.

• Technology uncertainty— despite the amenability of progression in improving the quality and reducing the cost, there is risk about whether reinventions will ever be better alternatives to incumbent matured products.  In reality, candidate disruptive technologies are fraught with pervasive uncertainties at the early stage of the life cycle.

• Unleashing creative destruction and Disruptive innovation—for unleashing creative destruction, reinventions must succeed in growing to surpass the performance and cost threshold set by the matured products.  Besides, startups pursuing reinventions must prevent the switching of incumbent firms to reinvention waves at a later stage so that creative destruction unfolds as disruptive innovations.     

• Winning the reinvention race—due to the possibility of taking over existing markets of matured products and opening a long wave of growth, competition will intensify around the tipping point of the rise of the reinvention wave. As the underlying force has been increasing the quality and reducing the cost, winning the race becomes essential to profit from reinvention.  

Managing reinvention for experiencing a long wave of growth

1. Detecting latent disruptive potential in technology inventions—playing with and integrating matured technologies does not lead to reinvention success. At the very early stage of invention, latent potential should be detected. Due to the absence of past data and non-linearity, predicting the life cycle of technology through extrapolation does not work.  It often needs a vital insight into the underlying science to figure out the scalability and likely limits.

• Making rational decisions to switch to reinvention at the right time—due to the loss-making beginning, rejection by the mainstream market, and uncertainty of crossing the threshold, rational decision-making to switch to a new wave is critical. Hence, the focus should be monitoring and predicting the undercurrent to make informed decisions amid risk. 

• Fueling creative destruction through systematic ideation—reinvention wave should be grown as a creative wave of destruction force. Hence, there is a need for systematic idea production for creating flow. However, such ideation requires continued technological advancement and insights into consumer preferences and competition.  

• Acquiring, advancing, and fusing technologies—despite the greatness, a single technology alone cannot power the reinvention wave to be a creative destruction force. Hence, to overcome the challenge, there is a need to acquire technologies through multiple means, such as internal development and acquiring firms, advancing them further and fusing them to increase the strength of the technology core for expanding the idea flow.

• Focusing on empathy and Passion for Perfection—for a growing reinvention wave in the right direction, there should be good coupling between technology advancement and insights about customer preferences in getting their jobs done. Hence, empathy and passion for perfection are vital in fueling a long wave of growth out of reinvention. 

• Finding market along with the growth of the new wave—due to the inappropriateness of the mainstream market at the early stage of the new wave, innovators need to find a nonconsumption market that will find reinvention attractive due to novelty. However, reinvention must be made as a better alternative to mature products along with growth for the mainstream market to take over. Over time, the reinvention wave expanded the market in previously overlooked or served by matured products.  

• Winning the race—to win the reinvention race, the focus should be on getting better, cheaper, and bigger. Such conflicting goals require deriving Economies of Scale, scope, and positive externalities by leveraging technology possibilities to drive the reinvention wave.

Shareholders’ value depends on a long wave of growth. The valuation of startups also grows due to progress in pursuing a reinvention wave, unleashing a long wave of growth. On the other hand, the prosperity of nations rises due to riding a long wave of growth. More critically, innovation epicenters and prosperity migrate across the boundaries of firms and countries due to a long wave of growth unleashed by reinventions of matured products. Consequentially, the rise and fall of firms and nations is underpinned by the reinvention dynamics powering a long wave of growth. Hence, the suggestion has been to reinvent. However, it’s imperative to understand the dynamics of long wave formation due to reinventions and prepare to lead to reinvent by entering at the right time with suitable capacity.