On one hand there is no denying that BPM innovations are more incremental and continuous rather than disruptive if people follow the approach correctly; on the other hand, whenever there is disruptive innovation business leaders will use BPM to model this innovative process.
In this post, we’ll illustrate the difference between disruptive innovation and continuous improvement and how BPM can contribute to both.
Also: Technological innovation process and its 8 steps
Can BPM innovations be disruptive?
Before going deeper into this issue, let’s recall the two concepts, disruptive innovation and continuous process improvement:
Disruptive Innovation
It’s all about the creation of new business models, detecting market opportunities that large competitors aren’t really exploring, or that no company is currently exploiting, that is: the creation of a new market.
In order for disruptive innovation to occur, it’s necessary to find a need that people have which no company is sufficiently attending, or that nobody is attending to at all or is too expensive.
Also see: Discontinuous Innovation: radically change the way you think (and profit)
Continuous process improvement
One of the foundations of BPM, continuous process improvement consists of analyzing processes as you execute them, at that time and model them in order to find failures, delays, bottlenecks and inefficiencies.
Once you detect these problems, you can design new processes to overcome these shortcomings. You model these optimized processes so that you can achieve better results and, afterwards, the operation is more productive and profitable.
For process improvement to work properly, it must be accompanied by automation, that is, integrate systems, automate some tasks, and collect performance data in real time.
With this data, it will be possible to monitor the performance of processes and find new possibilities for improvement, restarting this continuous cycle.
As you can see, BPM innovations don’t have to be radical. BPM innovations can be incremental and continuous, as in this case of process improvement.
Also see: Company Creativity and Innovation Management: Organized Chaos?
How can BPM generate innovation?
Continuous improvement generating BPM innovation
Those who know the scrum methodology and other agile approaches know that they’re based on step by step innovations. Several iterations that add value to the solution that develops little by little.
According to this launch strategy, with each new attribute or functionality you add, you test it, with clients. Only after this does the process continue, then validate each step, until you reach an innovative end result.
You can see more about this in these blog posts:
- Can Scrum and Minimum Viable Product methodologies work together?
- Agile Scrum Development: Everyday User’s Secrets
Have you noticed the similarity between continuous process improvement and agile methodologies in several areas?
Additionally, innovation itself doesn’t have to be in the product or service that you intend to launch in the market. It can be in the way you produce it, such as, the processes you use.
At this point, incremental and continuous BPM innovations can accumulate until you create a whole new process. A process which is different from the one you had originally, several improvement cycles back.
How BPM can support disruptive innovation
As we’ve seen, disruptive innovation is based on exploiting a market that is underutilized by competitors, or even non-existent, with an innovative product or service that meets the needs of consumers more efficiently and at an affordable price.
Certainly, after discovering this desired market solution, the best way to design a process that meets this need with a high perceived value and low cost of production will be through the use of BPM.
See more details on disruptive innovation in our blog:
- Disruptive Business Models: The Magic Formula Revealed
- Disruptive innovation: Is it the new fashionable business expression?
Do you need to create a new process and don’t know where to start? Use our process library, just register for free on our website to get inspired by ready-to-use process diagrams, which you can model as you like. Try HEFLO.