Why is the iPhone a radical innovation?
The first iPhone was a result of radical innovation. What made the iPhone radical was not the fact that it had a touchscreen, it was the fact that it gave mobile phones a new meaning.
In fact, the iPhone is considered both radical and disruptive since it addresses customer needs (it's a phone, but better) and shakes up the industry (offering internet access on a mobile device was previously unheard of).
Radical innovation is an invention that destroys or supplants an existing business model. Unlike architectural or incremental innovation, radical innovation blows up the existing system or process and replaces it with something entirely new.
It's generally understood that radical innovations have a high degree of novelty, totally or essentially new, and as a result, these innovations are also described as unique. The technology that made traditional cameras obsolete is now also obsolete.
Examples of radical innovation include the iPhone, which paved the way for the modern smartphone market, and the merging of farming equipment with sensor technology that provides farmers with data that is used to alter the farming industry.
Incremental innovation happens when you take a product or process that was once disruptive and you make changes that enhance the experience. One of those disruptive products was the Apple iPhone.
The iPhone combines the features of the iPod, computer, digital camera, and mobile technology into one device with a touchscreen interface (Kerner, Provazza, & Andrew Froehlich, 2021); and with the in-built capacity to support internet connectivity, web browsing, and Bluetooth.
Over time, the smartphone has been the focus of radical innovation, time and again, to become the ultimate connector—connecting people to communities, information, knowledge, entertainment—as well as the ideal workhorse, enabling people to seamlessly multitask on work and personal interactions.
We know all the technology for the iPhone existed before the iPhone ever came to market but the iPhone was still the most innovative device of its time. Why? Simply put, it made smartphones easier and more intuitive than any of the phones before it. It made browsing the web actually doable on a smartphone.
Radical innovation
Technological innovations, such as personal computer and the internet are examples of radical innovations that have transformed the way the entire world functions and communicates.
How is Apple a disruptive innovation?
Apple has been disrupting the industry by capitalizing on the power of reinvention, refinement, and sustaining innovation.
Netflix is an excellent example of the radical innovation to disrupt an industry.
Radical innovation is a type of innovation that combines the power of technology with a new business model. It is a concept that changes the relationship between customers and suppliers by displacing current products and services or by making new product categories.
However, Clayton Christensen and his followers have argued that Tesla isn't actually disruptive but sustaining innovation. Still others have claimed the company to be a prime example of radical innovation.
But even today, radical innovations, such as Facebook's and Twit- ter's development of social networks, have come about simply because their inventors thought they were interesting things to try.
Radical innovation can be summarized as a combination of new, revolutionary technology and new ways of conducting business, radical innovation goes far beyond incremental innovation, while incremental steps optimize existing products or services, radical innovation changes how we live or how companies conduct business.
Later on, other video and movie streaming services climbed up the ladder using disruptive innovation but Netflix remains an excellent example for radical innovation.
iPod. Out of all the innovative products Apple has launched throughout the years, iPod paved the way to success for Apple in 2001. A revolutionary product of its time, the iPod beat out the 90s MP3 players with its incredible ability to hold 1,000 songs in your pocket.
The most important development since the iPhone's invention is the ability to keep everything in one place. Your calls, texts, emails, photos, videos, music, calculators, maps, GPS, games, and so much more are now in just a single device.
Apple also pioneers into a new business spaces and creates new market niches. The company created game-changing innovations such as the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and iPad. Apple innovation leaders think in terms of platforms and pipelines and relentlessly push the pace of innovation.
Is iPhone an innovation or an invention?
Moving on to the second sets of meanings the iPhone itself was both invention and innovation, yes, because it is in part derivative of other earlier technologies. Apple didn't invent GPS for example, but incorporating it into a phone is innovation, not invention.
Thanks to the development of networks, technology, and social needs, phones today let users do much more—send and receive text messages and emails, take photos and videos, access the internet, listen to music, and play games, among many other functions.
Many studies have shown that as a non-thermal effect, exposure to mobile radiation produces free radicals in various body tissues such as the brain (6, 7) and endometrium (8) that can cause diseases such as cancer.
Mobile phones are considered an important human invention as it has been one of the most widely used and sold pieces of consumer technology. The growth in popularity has been rapid in some places, for example in the UK the total number of mobile phones overtook the number of houses in 1999.
Apple is well known for its innovations in hardware, software, and services. Thanks to them, it grew from some 8,000 employees and $7 billion in revenue in 1997, the year Steve Jobs returned, to 137,000 employees and $260 billion in revenue in 2019.
Apple's innovation strategy is one of the reasons behind its unparalleled success. It gives the company a competitive edge over its competitors and makes it the most sought-after brand by customers today.
The Apple Watch has enabled apple to also enter a new market and environment with the watch which was a huge success to them because it brought in new customers from the watch market who may have been looking for something different. For apples environment it brought in new competitors.
The Internet allows users to access information and have them engage in online learning for their education. This allows students who live quite a distance from a school to cut down on transportation and to learn from the comfort of their home. It also means that less resources need to be used to learn.
Uber is something many see as a disruptive innovation, when in fact their characteristics are more in line with a sustaining innovation and is thus not even seen to be radical.
Businesses that radically innovate are trendsetters, drivers of change and creators. If you want to make a difference in the world, radical innovation will help you make the biggest difference possible. It also helps you stay a step ahead of the competition, ensuring continued long-term growth.
Is Apple radical or incremental innovation?
This is a classic incremental innovation, with great potential, since Apple has created a large and well developed payments ecosystem, addressing many of the current barriers to adoption of mobile payments (acceptance, security, seamlessness).
Amazon, launched as an online bookstore in the mid-1990s, is an example of disruptive innovation. Disruptive innovation requires enabling technology, an innovative business model, and a coherent value network. Sustaining innovation is the process of innovating to improving products and services for existing customers.
The fifth industry the iPhone has disrupted has been taxi and personalized hired transportation. The iPhone has birthed services like Uber, Lyft, and others that have turned this industry upside down.
Boston Consulting Group has released its latest ranking of the most innovative companies in the word, with well-known – mainly American – multinationals dominating the list. For the second consecutive year the world's most innovative companies list is topped by Apple, with Microsoft and Amazon hot on its heels.
Radical technological innovation involves creating new-to-the-world technology that brings about revolutionary changes. It often creates new industry or market structures or involves dramatic changes to the existing ones.
| Rank | Company | Innovation Premium* |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Salesforce.com | 75.1 |
| 2 | Amazon.com | 58.9 |
| 3 | Intuitive Surgical | 57.6 |
| 4 | Tencent Holdings | 52.3 |
Amazon's Echo and Alexa, the first standalone piece of hardware dedicated to digital voice assistance and natural language processing, is an example of radical innovation.
Incremental Innovation
Google built a search engine 20 years back and have made advancements in making that search engine incrementally better every year.
Electric Vehicles (EVs) are an important technological solution to our unsustainable mobility system. The EV constitutes a radical innovation that completely differs from the established Internal Combustion Engine Vehicle (ICEV) (Bakker et al., 2012a).
Incremental innovation, which is the dominant form of innovation, focuses on improving solutions within a given framework. “Doing better, what is already done”. Radical innovation is changing the frame of solutions, introducing new paradigms and creating potential for major market changes.
What makes the iPhone innovative?
The iPhone combines the features of the iPod, computer, digital camera, and mobile technology into one device with a touchscreen interface (Kerner, Provazza, & Andrew Froehlich, 2021); and with the in-built capacity to support internet connectivity, web browsing, and Bluetooth.
The smartphone was a radical innovation that signaled the end of for traditional mobile phones. Ask Nokia.
Not only were Apple's AirPods the first culturally adopted wireless earbuds, but they have become by far the most successful product in their category. Apple took the original AirPods' success and quickly released a second-generation model that added new features like wireless charging and improved battery life.
Apple's innovation strategy forms the competitive advantage and company's business strategy: Apple's business strategy has been to create a new market out of disruptive innovation and make competition irrelevant in it. Its competitive advantage relies on creation out of destruction through the reinvention of products.
Marketing – Focus on fulfilling consumer needs: For the iPhone, Apple markets the services provided, rather than the hardware, focusing on what the products and services can do for the consumer, rather than the specifications. Key to success is not focusing on products, but rather the fulfillment of consumer needs.
Some of these phones broke the design monotony in the smartphone industry after over a decade. Then, there were other devices that introduced innovations such as fast wireless charging, improved video stabilisation, and futuristic under-display selfie cameras.
Android phones are generally more innovative than iPhone, including Samsung Galaxy models with foldable screens, as Ackerman alluded to.
