Looking for a disruptive edge

IN today's volatile business world, hungry start-ups and global corporations alike are looking to create groundbreaking products and services that can turn entire industries on their heads.

Such extreme innovation has seen Apple's iTunes disrupt the music industry and room-sharing website Airbnb change the dynamics of the hospitality game. In earlier years, the mobile phone replaced the pager, while the thumb drive made floppy disks redundant.

Unlike "sustaining innovation" that involves taking an existing process, product or service and improving upon it to make it better or cheaper to produce, "disruptive innovation" is transformational and has the effect of almost completely replacing current industry leaders.