Disruptive Innovation
Essays

It is a fact that the world has become increasingly complex over the last century, with technology and electronics changing rapidly almost overnight. Complex social issues have joined the wave of change as globalization…

Both articles and their extensive empirical and theoretical research have a wealth of insights and intelligence that brings e-commerce into a more realistic and pragmatic perspective. Starting with Exploring E-commerce benefits for businesses in a developing country (Molla, Heeks, 2007) that authors explain how they have interviewed 92 businesses in South Africa who have moved beyond the basic stage of ecommerce as defined by the 6-point e-commerce capability indicator cited in their article (Molla, Heeks, 2007). In citing this scale the authors contend that the much-hyped benefits of e-commerce surrounding operating efficiency gains including lower transaction costs and greater fluidity and flexibility of e-commerce are in fact not occurring in the emerging economy of South Africa. Instead, the authors state that the greatest gains are being made in the area of intra- and interorganizational communication and collaboration, clustered primarily in services industry as evidenced by their cited research (Molla, Heeks, 2007). This is certainly the case in Brazil where the continued growth of e-commerce has succeed while other nations have failed mainly due to the exceptional stability of the nations' banking system, strong laws and regulations to protect e-commerce and online commerce, and an infrastructure that makes automating supply chains more achievable than many other regions and nations of the world (Paulo, Dedrick, 2004). Brazil is also unique in that is government subsidizes new ventures and seeks out global technology partners, including Intel, for its e-commerce and infrastructure-dependent industries (Callaway, 2008). Juxtaposing the growth of Brazil is the stagnation of South Africa as is shown in the analysis, which implies e-commerce is better at breaking down the walls of organizations and getting them to work together more effectively than it is in driving top-line revenue from transactions., This consistent with the more pragmatic and practical studies of e-commerce adoption in emerging nations that show e-commerce system development and implementation will teach a business more about itself than it had never considered prior to the implementation (Alemayehu, Heeks, 2007). The process of creating an e-commerce strategy including the process and system integration, coordination of product and services catalogues, redefining and clarification of pricing, and the ability to define expediting processes for service and service recovery of negative customer events all force a business to grow faster than it had anticipated (Standing, Benson, 2000). Small businesses enter e-commerce thinking the big pay-off will be increased top-line revenue growth and greater transaction efficiencies (Molla, Heeks, 2007). Small businesses in commodity driven industries will also do this to specifically drive down the cost per transaction and pool purchasing power to gain an advantage in negotiating with suppliers (Salcedo, Henry, Rubio, 2003). All of these actual benefits are completely different than the much-hyped and promoted benefits of e-commerce being frictionless commerce throughout a supply chain, greater revenue growth at lower transaction costs, and ease and speed of generating customer loyalty, all contributing to skyrocketing profitability of an enterprise (Romano, 2009). All of these benefits accrue, in actuality, to oligopolistic firms who have the infrastructure, from a corporate IT staff to a well-known brand and the ability to selectively disintermediate their own supply chain to gain the much-hyped transaction cost efficiencies (Molla, Heeks, 2007). The greater the global market power of a company and its commanding position in an oligopoly, the more it can enforce its market-maker statue and drive change (Alemayehu, Heeks, 2007). Molla and Heeks (2007) deflate the hype of Transaction Cost Theory and its corollary of disintermediation by showing through their research that perfect competition doesn't exist in e-commerce globally and is especially problematic in emerging countries due to the lack of value chain integration and transparency. The authors also make an excellent point that the main catalysts or fuel of e-commerce growth in many nations is market research and mass customization (Molla, Heeks, 2007). There are myriad of examples of how e-commerce combined with mass customization has led to explosive, profitable growth on the part of companies with Dell not only reaching over $1B in revenues from online sales but also achieving double-digit inventory turns and extensive operational efficiencies at the same time (Luo, John, Du, 2005). The authors contend that for many emerging nations this however is not possible given the lack of trust and adoption of e-commerce, and the lack of alacrity and accuracy in complex supply chain relationships including a lack of clarity in communications and procurement performance (Molla, Heeks, 2007). Contrasting this however are the effects of a stabilized and trusted banking system in Brazil for example (Brazilian e-Commerce, 2005). The greater the trust levels in a given nation's financial system the higher the level of e-commerce adoption, even in highly collectivist cultures (Joia, Sanz, 2005). The authors continue with a triangulation of market performance, communications and transaction cost reduction, showing how e-commerce is more of a catalyst of organizational synchronization than a platform for selling more online (Molla, Heeks, 2007).

Agility, time-to-market and insights into market dynamics are a few of the many benefits of standardizing the operations of an organization on an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. Up until about a decade ago, the economics of enterprise software relegated these systems to larger, more diverse and well-capitalized enterprises, with the majority of ERP systems being installed and customized in Fortune 1,000 corporations (Velcu, 2010). These ERP implementations began to be pervasively supported by Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) during the later 1990s and continue throughout today. As SOA architectures have permeated organizations, the lessons learned from a business process re-engineering (BPR), distributed order management and software engineering gains have contributed to the success of Cloud computing in general and Software-as-a-Service specifically (Moore, 2002). In addition, Open Source Software (OSS), Cloud- and SaaS-based ERP systems (Passion for Research, 2012b) and a complete redefining of the economics of enterprise software have taken place. All of these many determinants of enterprise software economics have in turn changed the ERP landscape significantly over the last decade. Today, Small & Medium Enterprises (SME) can afford, via the economics of Cloud computing, to have the same level of functionality enterprise had in the past. SMEs can now can gain the same benefits that Fortune 1,000 companies could only afford in the past. The intent of this analysis is to evaluate these underlying economics of cloud computing, specifically looking at how Open Source Software (OSS) and Cloud computing are re-ordering the economics of enterprise software in addition to discussing the limitations, advantages and disadvantages for SMEs interested in gaining the benefits of ERP systems. Finally, strategies for implementing ERP in SMEs is analyzed and presented including an assessment of a successful Cloud implementation.

¶ … NoSQL Databases Live Up TO Their Promise? (Leavitt, 2010) the author presents a fair and balanced analysis of the NoSQL database technologies and supporting Big Data platforms including Cassandra and HBase (the…

The importance of creativity and innovation in the workplace is well documented, but the debate over nature vs. nurture continues with some authorities maintaining that people are born with attributes such as creativity…

The role of social media is without question the single most disruptive innovation re-ordering the balance of power of customer relationships in all industries and nations. Social media has given consumers a clear, loud and very visible voice to share what delights and disgusts them about the performance of brands and companies. Social media is the most powerful communication, collaboration and potentially the most revolutionary channel for making customer relationships more effective than they ever have been before. These platforms were in place and functioning within the social fabric of nearly all industries with service industries including airlines, getting the brunt of complaints on Twitter, Facebook and through the many other social media sites. During July, 2009 a flashpoint event happened that showed just how potent the real-time communication and information velocity on social networks is. Dave Carroll watched as his expensive, professional-grade guitar was tossed and dropped on the tarmac buy United Airlines (UAL) baggage handlers. After nearly a year of fighting with UAL and getting nowhere, Dave Carroll did what anyone with his innate skills and talent did; he wrote a song, recorded it and created a very entertaining video which within seven days crossed well over 50 million views globally (Shambora, 2010). United was still unphased, and to this day will not mention it in their financial statements, even after a Harvard Business Review case study has been written on how not to manage a public relations crisis in social media. This event set in motion a powerful catalyst of customers going on the offensive with videos, creating blogs, writing tweets and doing Facebook posts on the walls of companies who delivered exceptionally good or bad service. Now three years since the initial event, there is a Social Customer Relationship Management (SCRM) revolution underway. The intent of this analysis is to show how the availability and use of social media on the Internet is changing how businesses operate. Social media delivers the most precious information a company needs to survive, and that includes the brutally honest opinion of how they are performing relative to their customers' expectations (Greenberg, 2010).

Blockbuster has succeeded by being very agile and quick to respond from a marketing and services standpoint to very significant opportunities and threats in their core markets. Having changed their value chain three times in the case study and a myriad of modifications in each cycle of business model re-engineering, Blockbuster emerges as a multi-channel based entertainment provider. The three strategic cycles of their value chain parallel the industry lifecycles of the video rental marketplace, pay-per-view premium and finally online services comparable to direct delivery programs like Hulu and distribution-centric business models like Netflix. Blockbuster's aggressive retail expansion, retrenchment, introduction of games, online services and direct competition to Netflix all show how quickly the company can re-intent itself. Yet for all of these strengths, Blockbuster is still being disrupted by entertainment, gaming and entertainment services business models instead of being the disruptor. They have yet to break out of being continually in a revision mode related to their retailing operations. Their retail-based business model is slowing dying due to the high costs of operating locations, the rise of Netflix as a viable alternative for watching videos at home, and the disintermediation from Redbox, WalMart and other mass merchandisers offering lower-priced and broader selections of videos to watch. Blockbuster still faces a very serious strategic challenge, and that is overcoming the commoditization of the industry they are in, where price and availability have become the new differentiators.

Apple continues to create an entirely new level of disruptive innovation in the areas of MP3, smartphone and tablet PCs by continually fueling new ecosystems of musical and video content while revolutionizing the hardware experience. The continual evolution of the iPad is today re-ordering the structure of the PC market and with it, enterprise computing (Apple Investor Relations, 2012). Just as the iPod and iPhone are revolutionizing music delivery it is feasible to assume that that iPad and follow-on tablet PCs will also bring the same level of rapid change into enterprise computing. Apple has redefined the concept of the platform as the competitive force in stable and emerging, high growth markets (Deck, 1997). This focus on ecosystem-driven profitability however is ripe for disruptive innovation at the individual customer experience and device level. The intent of this analysis is to look at how a more powerful customer experience strategy at the device level can reorder the table PC market, using the Porter Five Forces Model as the frame of reference for this transformation (Porter, 2008). Ecosystems Aren't Enough Anymore Apple, as of this writing in December 2012, faces a multitude of threats. Their operating systems are under attack from Google and the Android operating system. The Apple iTunes ecosystem, which at one time generated nearly 30% of all profits for the company is increasingly under attack from free services including Spotify that have very unique, all-you-can-listen-to business models that are making iTunes outdated and expensive (Apple Investor Relations, 2012). iTunes did revolutionize music and video distribution and also showed that scalability across devices could be accomplished relatively quickly from a platform standpoint as well (Deck, 1997). Figure 1, Apple Product and Services Ecosystem, taken from a filing the company made with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) highlights how the iTunes ecosystem works (Apple Investor Relations, 2012).

The Kindle Fire, priced at $199, is just 39% of the price of it's most well-entrenched and popular competitor the Apple iPad2, which sells for $499. Amazon has pursued a market penetration strategy with this product,…

Evaluating the Advantages and Disadvantages