Backcasting from the Future: Strategies for Accelerating and De-Risking Discontinuous Innovations

The last decade has seen an acceleration in the rate of innovation. No industry from Agri-tech to moviemaking (computer graphics) to hospitality (asset light Airbnb) to pharmaceuticals (precision medicines) to Edu-tech to fin-tech has been immune to disruption by technological innovations and new business models. The rate of innovation is, however, not uniform. While many innovations have been incremental, “radical” and “discontinuous” innovations are more disruptive and require both vendors and users to make major investments. This article proposes a strategic framework for product-market development and growth for discontinuous innovations.