Affiliate Marketing and Disruptive Innovation

Disruptive Innovation is a term that is attributed to Clayton M. Christensen in 2003. Basically, it refers to what occurs when some type of significant innovation (new technology, business practice, etc.) is developed that dramatically affects an existing market or industry.

 Often a significantly disruptive innovation will eventually force an existing industry to either adapt or become obsolete. Some of the most obvious instances of disruptive innovation involve a new technology completely turning a pre-existing industry upside down.

 A couple of historical examples would be the invention of the printing press which disrupted the traditional 'industry' of hand copying books and the invention of the automobile which disrupted the established horse and buggy industry. 

More recently, we have the development of digital photography and the traditional film photography industry, digital music and the recording industry, wireless cell phones and the legacy phone companies. You get the idea.

The rise of the internet and digital media in general created massive disruption of numerous legacy markets and industries. In fact, affiliate marketing could easily be viewed as a disruptive innovation affecting the traditional advertising and marketing industry.

 The interesting thing about disruptive innovations is that the most successful ones (that eventually replace a pre-existing industry) then become targets for future disruption themselves.

 Put another way, yesterday's disruptive innovation is tomorrow's legacy industry that is destined to be disrupted by some other innovation.

Historically, major disruptive innovation seems to have taken place over longer periods of time. The automobile didn't replace the horse drawn carriage overnight (it took the additional development of mass production to really speed it along). 

But, much of the innovation we see happening today happens more quickly. In the purely digital realm, we see a company like Twitter rise seemingly overnight and change the landscape for the social media and search marketing industries.

The marketing industry has been in almost a constant state of disruption since the dawning of the internet. Since one of the foundations of the industry is based on how consumers communicate and access information, any new development that changes consumer behavior in these areas becomes a new challenge and opportunity for marketers.

As online marketers, we have leveraged new technology and helped to drive the massive disruption of traditional advertising. In fact, many online and affiliate marketers seem to thrive by closely following the latest disruptions.

 Far from the old-school advertising execs who initially resisted the online medium because it was new and different (and therefore a threat to the status quo), today's successful affiliate marketer is quick to take advantage of the latest developments. The rise of social media wasn't viewed as a threat to our current business model, but rather a new opportunity to grow and become even more profitable.

This strategy of looking for ways to leverage new technology and consumer communication trends has served the online marketing industry well in an environment where change happens incredibly quickly. The fact that we have basically grown up with constant change will likely serve us well in the years ahead as our industry continues to evolve to meet consumers wherever they go (mobile anyone?).

If there is any lesson for affiliate and online marketers from looking back at other examples of disruptive innovation, it is that if you get too comfortable with the way things are today and aren't ready to adjust your thinking and tactics to accommodate surprising changes, you risk being left in the dust.

 If you didn't adjust your search marketing programs the next time Google changes its algorithms or tweak your email initiatives to accommodate new filtering technology, you would end up as becoming as obsolete as a VCR. The better you are at actively identifying new disruptions as they emerge, the more successful you are likely to be in affiliate marketing.


Tom Wozniak is the director of marketing for Media Breakaway, LLC and writes the official blog for http://www.affiliate.com. He has been in marketing and advertising for over 25 years with over 10 years of experience in the online world.

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disruptive innovation examples , six steps to disruptive innovation

the disruptive innovation examples:
Sometimes an idea management escapes from the Harvard Business Review's pages and is part of the zeitgeist. In the 1990s was "re-engineering".

Today is "disruptive innovation examples ". TechCrunch, a new web technologies website, an Annual "interruption" holiday. CNBC, a cable news channel, produces a "" disruptive annual list of the most disruptive companies.

The mention of "disruptive innovation examples" adds a layer of sophistication to the bread and butter on education or speech health care. But what is the breakthrough disruptive innovation examples ?

The disruptive innovation 'examples' theory was coined by Clayton Christensen of the Harvard Business School, in his book "The Innovator's Dilemma." Christensen used the term to describe i ,disruptive innovation examples that create new markets through the discovery of new classes of customers.

They do this in part by relying on new technologies, but also by the development of new models and exploitation of older technologies in new ways affairs. disruptive innovation examples  compared to support disruptive innovation examples  that simply improving existing products.

 Personal computers, for example, were breakthrough innovations because they created a new mass market for computers; previously, expensive mainframe computers were sold only to large companies and research universities.

The "innovative dilemma" is the difficult choice of a company established faces when he must choose between holding in an existing market for the same thing a little better, or enter new markets through the introduction of new technologies "disruptive innovation examples" and adoption of new business models. IBM addressed this dilemma with the launch of a new business unit for PCs, while large computers. Netflix had a more radical movement, far from changing its old business model .

(sending DVD rental by mail) for a new (video on demand streaming to their customers) A breakthrough innovations often found its first customers in the bottom of the market: unproven, often crude, products that can not . to have a high price holders are often complacent,disruptive innovation examples, slow to recognize the threat posed by their weaker competitors but as successive refinements improve to the point that they begin to steal customers, they may end up reshaping entire industries.: ads (Craigslist), long distance calls (Skype), music stores (iTunes), research libraries (Google) local shops (eBay), taxis (Uber) and newspapers (Twitter).

In part because of the disruptive innovation examples, the average working time for the CEO of a Fortune 500 company has halved in ten years from 2000 to less than five years old. There are good reasons to believe that the pace of change will increase, increasing the power of the computer and join the Internet, the expansion of its negative influence in new areas. Google promises to reinvent the car as autonomous vehicles; Amazon promises to reinvent business (again) using drones;(disruptive innovation examples) 3D printing could disrupt production. But perhaps the most striking breakthrough innovations come from the bottom of the pyramid entrepreneurs inventing new ways to provide education and health care for a fraction of the cost of the current market leaders.