Disruptive Technologies: Innovation-Driven Growth Your Company Needs

Businesses who want to innovate need to open themselves to new ideas beyond their current reach. Unfortunately, many corporations today have fortress-like structures, with rigid styles. These corporate standards are for a good reason; to weather the storm of competition in the marketplace while keeping their brand top-of-mind. However, as far as innovation goes, such a setup is just too restrictive. In this article, you will get to know how to connect your corporation with the perfect disruptive technology to spark innovation and still respect your corporate standards and brand reputation.

What is disruptive technology?

Disruptive technology is one that breaks ground with a new product or service and creates a completely new market. Being new, disruptive technology may not be refined enough to perform by itself, as it appeals to a small audience at first. A few examples of disruptive technologies that grew into blockbuster markets are:

• Automobiles disrupt horse and carriages
• The personal computer disrupts practically everything
• Windows operating system disrupts basic operating systems
• Email disrupts communication of many kinds
• Cellular Phones followed by PDA’s and both replaced by Smartphones, which also disrupted MP3 players, pocket cameras, calculators, GPS systems and others
• Mobile computing and laptops
• Cloud computing
• Social networking

When these technologies hit the market, they disrupted sustaining technologies. Sustaining technologies are what corporations are designed to work with. By knowing their market, cultivating customer relationships and developing technology based on their core competence, corporations can chug along just fine. When it comes to capitalizing on potential cost-savings and efficiencies or new markets, corporations often don’t know where to start. There could be a large capital investment required to develop disruptive technologies or the corporation may not even recognize the value of disrupting the status quo.

What are the trending technologies for startups?

UBI Global has benchmarked hundreds of business incubator programs and discovered that the cutting-edge concepts and innovations that their client startups are involved in reflect today’s top trends. Here are the trending technologies from our World Benchmark Report 2017/2018:

Source: UBI Global World Benchmark Report 17/18

Whatever industry your corporation is in, be assured that exponential growth of disruptive technologies will shift the business landscape, either with you or around you. The most efficient, effective way to market with new technologies under your respected brand is working with a startup company. Fortunately, finding the right startup and incubator program to work with doesn’t have to be a monumental task.

Corporations and Startups: A Match Made in Heaven

Corporations and startup companies were made for each other, but neither may recognize it at first. The two may run at different speeds or have different end goals. They may have trouble communicating between the structured corporate and the unstructured startup. That’s where a business incubation program comes in. A business incubation program builds the bridge that makes corporate and startups work together. The program provides structure and goal setting, in conjunction with the corporation’s style and preferences. The program also gives the startup a healthy start for growth before the corporation even gets involved by providing workspace, staff, mentorship and more.

Both startup and corporation can benefit from being involved with university-linked business incubation programs. The university setting provides superior research and quality staff that a startup would have difficulty incorporating on their own. The vast university support and resources benefit the growth of the startup into an asset for the corporation.

We Are Ready to Get Started: Next Steps

Get in touch with UBI Global, the world leader in making connections between corporations, startups and the programs that nurture them. We have gathered the data, researched and benchmarked the top programs in the world, ready to match you with the right disruptive technology to break through a new market.

Among the Top Programs benchmarked by UBI Global was The DMZ at Ryerson University, a university-managed business incubation program located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. A highly selective program, The DMZ receives 856 applications per year on average but only accepts 56 of these.

UBI Global supports corporations in finding the right incubation programs and startups to help them satisfy their unique innovation needs. Business incubators like The DMZ have vetted the startups and found the best and brightest in several industry sectors who are ready to take the next step. This matches perfectly with corporations who are looking to invest in new ideas. The path to opening a profitable, new market just became much shorter.

“It’s all about being able to connect globally with the right people, the right incubators, and the right accelerator programs to support our companies’ successes.” – Abdullah Snobar, DMZ, when asked what it meant to be a Top Program. To see Abdullah’s full video interview, please click here.

UBI Global, through our network of incubation programs, their startups and universities, can introduce your corporation to new, impactful innovation in less time that it takes to develop it on your own. Create a win-win situation; your corporate experience, knowledge and brand combined with disruptive technology and product evolution. Our friendly staff is always available to consult with you on sponsoring or partnering with startups or incubation programs. Get in touch with us today by emailing [email protected].

For more information about the World Benchmark Report 2017/2018, find the report page here.