Ep40: What’s all this buzz about Disruption?

Recently, we attended an event and different buzzwords flew over our heads. Words like invention, innovation, disruption and very recently “innovention”. So we thought to talk about it.

Many people have coined words around innovation. Most of these words are to explain and buttress the significance of innovation to the African entrepreneur. We had a conversation on the meaning of these different buzzwords and how they affect us as entrepreneurs.

Disruption and innovation does not occur in a vacuum. They only happen when you identify a need to be solved. They are creative solutions.

We further tried to explain the meanings of the words (Invention, Innovation, Innovention and Disruption) and their differences:

• Invention  is the creation of a new product or process that did not exist previously and is recognized as the product of some unique intuition or genius.
• Innovation moves one step further and requires implementation of the inventive act. Innovation is creating new value and/or capturing value in a new way.
• Innovention is a combination of Invention and Innovation which is already encompassed in the definition of Innovation. (This is just repetitive and we advise you just stick to innovation).
• Disruption is a product/service that causes a radical change in an industry and results in a new market or stream of income.

Key things to note when aiming for innovation:

1. It could be radical or disruptive
2. Innovation could be a redefinition of how a company operates, a change in Business model
3. It could also be continuous improvement of a product or service.

What do you think? Drop your comments below.

In case you missed it, we discussed something controversial last week: Is copying ok in entrepreneurship? Please share  your thoughts and don’t forget to share.

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Tagged as: AFRICA, African, afropreneur, business, Buzzwords, creativity, disruption, Entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, innovation, Innovention, invention, solution, the afropreneur.