Explore the Three Types of Innovation: Procedural, Radical, and Disruptive

The rapid evolution of technology has driven the need for continuous innovation across businesses in all sectors. This demand is even more pronounced with the advent of artificial intelligence as a working tool. In today’s landscape, companies aspiring to stand out and maintain a competitive edge must be mindful of various innovation strategies.

Within the context of technology projects, three types of innovation stand out: procedural innovation, radical innovation, and disruptive innovation. In this article, we will delve into each of these innovation types and explore how they can be applied to drive your projects, businesses, and new ventures.

Throughout the article, we will also make references to custom software projects, whether for digital transformation or as strategies for new products or digital initiatives.

Procedural Innovation

Procedural Innovation involves incremental enhancements to existing processes, aimed at boosting efficiency, reducing costs, and optimizing operations. This can encompass workflow restructuring, adopting new technologies, automating repetitive tasks, or implementing more effective management methods.

This form of innovation aims to streamline how things are done within an organization, resulting in overall improved performance and heightened competitiveness in the market.

Here at Ubistart, when we discuss procedural innovation, we recognize it as a strategy for internal digital transformation for clients. Consequently, we engage in ongoing conversations with clients aiming to take their next steps beyond Excel spreadsheets and Google tools.

Often, these companies’ processes are confined to spreadsheet controls or even lack any form of control altogether. Thus, the development of a tailored platform or system to manage these manual processes can be considered a procedural innovation.

An example could be a logistics company that tracks shipments and deliveries solely through spreadsheets. In this scenario, a real-time tracking system could be implemented for these deliveries, coupled with Business Intelligence (BI) reporting to visualize delivery statistics, delays, operational bottlenecks, and facilitate decision-making.

In essence, process improvement entails elevating a manual, data-light process, overseeing all its stages with enhanced efficiency.

Radical Innovation

Radical Innovation entails significant and disruptive changes to a company’s products, services, or processes. It encompasses everything from creating something entirely new to incremental enhancements, introducing a novel approach to an already familiar market.

A prime example could be devising a novel digital purchasing experience for a textile industry, tailored to their retail clients. The product for sale remains the same (apparel), yet the sales experience and customer relationship have been transformed.

When translated to the Ubistart realm, we view this innovation strand as a cornerstone, labeled the digital strategy. Here, established companies aim to forge new products or novel sales methods utilizing technology in the form of applications, systems, marketplaces, among others.

Here, we can also include startups aiming to enable new functionalities or even a solution developed from scratch, customized specifically for your business model.

You might still wonder: are there risks and uncertainties in the radical innovation model? Yes, but they aren’t as critical as in disruptive innovation, which we will delve into further below.

Radical innovation has an impact on creating new business opportunities, changing buying behavior, or solidifying companies that haven’t moved to reinvent their products or services.

However, even so, the effort to secure a market share through radical innovation is less demanding when compared to strategies employed in disruptive innovation.

In summary, you should comprehend radical innovation as products and services that offer a different experience from what they provided previously. Digital cameras, smartphones, private transportation, and the internet are a few examples.

Disruptive Innovation

Lastly, we come to disruptive innovation, which occurs when a new technology or approach creates an entirely new market, often replacing existing products or services.

With the recent tech market boom, startups have gained prominence and fit perfectly into this niche, bringing forth novel offerings that directly impact consumer behavior.

This happens as they are formed by individuals or a group of people seeking to create a business model that is:

Scalable (able to grow with lean operations)
Repeatable (can replicate the product without requiring a complex production line)
High in uncertainty (disruptive innovation)

In this concept, we witness that a startup, at its core, seeks to positively impact the market with solutions that either didn’t exist or were addressed slowly. This gives us examples like Netflix, Facebook, Airbnb, Waze, and Google, all of which were once startups before evolving into the major corporations we know today.

In this sense, they ventured into a market with a substantial gap and traversed a challenging path at the outset, as they needed to demonstrate to users the positive impact their solutions would bring. However, in the long run, well, we don’t even need to say it… Clearly, they achieved tremendous success.

For this type of innovation, a significant portion of our clients are startups. We assist them in validating their objectives by constructing digital technology, enabling them to attain the market share they diligently pursue.

How Ubistart Can Drive Innovation in Your Company

In a highly competitive and ever-evolving landscape, innovation is crucial for the success of custom software projects. Through procedural, radical, and disruptive innovation, companies can create unique, efficient, and future-oriented solutions.

With its experience and expertise in custom software development, Ubistart is ready to be your partner on this innovation journey. Whether adopting agile practices, exploring revolutionary technologies, or identifying untapped market opportunities, Ubistart provides the services and knowledge needed to elevate your custom software projects to the next level.

Success in building custom software projects is directly linked to the ability to innovate and adapt. By partnering with Ubistart, your company will be well-positioned to tackle the challenges of the current market and build software solutions that drive long-term growth and success.

Looking to implement digital transformation in your company? Count on us to provide an innovation team that will construct a tailored solution for your business. Get in touch and talk to one of our consultants!