Just about every business has numerous links in their value chain that are all intended to add value to the final product. From engineering to marketing to sales to purchasing to assembly or manufacturing or delivery etc. In complex operations and there are more links and as a result more opportunity for innovators to disrupt a business or process or even an entire industry. To use an example from my flight experience, we often talked about the chain of events that led to an accident and how the removal of one link would have prevented the accident. The same theory applies here to the links in the value chain of a product or service. Innovators need to examine every link in the chain of value adding events and determine whether they are truly adding value to the end product and ultimately the customer. If each link is not adding to the value that the customer really wants to pay for then you have an opportunity to eliminate or improve that link to stay ahead of the competition. If you are not constantly scanning these links for weakness you can bet someone from outside your business is and will come up with a disruptive innovation that you should have. How do you identify the weakest link in your value chain? You can start by looking at every part of your process and asking some questions. Does the customer really benefit from this activity? Does the customer benefit from that product feature? Is the customer likely to continue to pay for this even if the economy has a down turn? If not then it is a weak link in your chain that makes your business vulnerable to disruptive innovation. Once you identify the weak links then you can go into the idea generation, analysis and implementation of your solution and make the change before someone else does.
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