“Disruption” has become a popular business term, especially in the innovation realm. My company is working with a lot of corporate clients to help them identify disruptive opportunities and disruptive threats. I also enjoy passing that disruptive potential on to our clients who are startups and lone inventors.

So what is Disruptive Innovation?

Disruptive innovation requires looking beyond technology and new products to understand the barriers that are leaving the often unrecognized or unexpressed needs of nonusers and low-end users unfulfilled. It typically provides new levels of convenience, access, and cost effectiveness to people – often at the expense of some high-end feature. Companies often overlook the needs of many people who would welcome a “worse” product that made some aspect of life better for them.

You’re probably asking, “how can this be? No one would want a product that is worse, would they?” In fact they do! And that’s disruptive.

Kleenex® facial tissue and the Swiffer® mop are great examples of what Clayton Christensen of the Harvard School of Business has called “disruptive innovation:” an innovation that may be initially worse in terms of standard metrics of established products and customers, but which appeals to non-users or low-end users by offering improved convenience, lower cost, or other benefits not previously viewed as the basis for competition.

When the facial tissues were first available in the 1920s, many women used them to remove makeup and cold cream. Marketers at Kimberly-Clark responded, repositioning the product in the early 1930s as “the handkerchiefs you can throw away.” Women used them as a convenient replacement for the handkerchief, even though they weren’t as strong or washable, and that forever changed the handkerchief industry.

The disposable Swiffer mop also offers a “worse” performance relative to the durability and cleaning power of conventional dry and wet mops, but would convert many non-moppers and infrequent moppers into frequent floor cleaners!

The key here is that it’s all about the business model –not the technology itself—that determines whether the opportunity is disruptive or not. A given technology can be launched as a sustaining innovation aimed at mainstream users in a head-to-head battle with the previous incumbents in the market, or it can be launched in a way that draws in non-users and low-end users while motivating the incumbents to largely ignore your efforts since they aren’t feeling pain - until it’s too late.

That’s the kind of disruptive advantage that motivates the long-established giants to flee rather than fight, giving the market entrant a precious foothold from which to grow with further “sustaining” innovation.

I’m seeing a lot more hybrids and other fuel-efficient cars on the roads these days, as drivers battle the rising fuel costs. Here’s an innovative auto that promises 41-MPG on the highway: the “smart fortwo.” (The gas tank of the smart fortwo is 8.7 gallons!)

The inventors of the fortwo started sketching out this unique care in the early 1990’s with a Joint Venture between Mercedes-Benz and Swatch, the makers of Swatch watches known for their wide array of colorful designs. Nicolas Hayek, the inventor of the Swatch watch brought his ideas for an “ultra-urban” car to Mercedes-Benz, and Mercedes took on this engineering challenge with the outcome of one of the most innovative cars ever introduced.

Ahh, but is it safe? Mercedes says it is. The tridion safety cell was it’s answer for a small car that can meet high safety standards. The tridion safety cell is a “hard shell” that surrounds the smart fortwo’s occupants with an energy displacing system of longitudinal and transverse structural members.

The auto is made of energy efficient and recyclable materials. For example, only water-soluble paints are used for the smart’s three basic colors – black, white and yellow. Painting the tridion safety cell is done by the powder-coating process. This removes the need for solvents. The body panels with molded-in color are fully recyclable. Environmental management is a high priority in Hambach, France, where the car is made.

The Greenpeace study, titled “Playing Dirty,” reveals that the next-generation game consoles like Nintendo Wii, Sony PlayStation 3 Elite and Microsoft Xbox 360 have all tested positive for hazardous chemicals. For example, high levels of bromine were found in the components of all three, with the highest by weight levels in the PS3 and the Wii. But the tests also showed that each of the manufacturers avoided or reduced the use of individual hazardous substances in certain materials within their consoles.

The good news is that greener consoles are possible, according to the report. My feeling is that a typical video game consumer is not likely to care that much about the toxins in landfills, but the companies making them will definitely want to make strides to rid their products of them, for the greater good.

The days of loose coupon clippings may be coming to an end, as the coupons we used to clip and carry are just about to go mobile. McDonald, Starbucks, Procter & Gamble, General Mills, Kimberly-Clark, Clorox and Del Monte and others are all posed to send their customers mobile coupons, either via text messages (with their permission), directing the user to the company’s mobile coupon site or promoting the product through barcode technology where retailers scan the barcodes right from your cell phone as you stand in the checkout line!

This one-to-one marketing opportunity is huge–where messages are customized and localized towards individual’s tastes and behaviors. Today there are more than 230 million mobile phone users in the US; and an estimated three billion coupons will be issued to mobile phone users by 2011, amounting to sales of almost $87 billion.

How do consumers feel about coupons via cell phone? Three-quarters of consumers felt that a coupon would be the most effective incentive to get them to respond to a mobile marketing message and that half would use mobile coupons for a discount at a local store, according to a survey by ABI Research. Similar studies by Jupiter Research show that 30 percent of consumers would like to receive mobile coupons.

A start-up called Cellfire provides advertisers/marketers with the ability to promote special discounts or savings of their goods/services via mobile coupons (opted-in SMS). Some of the advertisers include Domino’s Pizza, Supercuts, EMI Music, LA Times and Hardees’ among others. McDonald recently conducted a regional test of mobile coupons where consumers could receive one of the chain’s new iced coffees for free. Subway is using mobile coupon to drive retail traffic with last-minute special offers. To date, more than 10,000 retail stores nationwide are said to redeem Cellfire mobile coupons.

The Kroger grocery store has entered into a partnership with consumer-packaged food companies like P&G, General Mills and Kimberly-Clark to offer mobile coupons at the end of the second quarter using Cellfire services. The coupons offered will be mobile-exclusive and will be valid for specific store locations.

Other mobile coupon providers include GoMobo, SnapTell and Ugotitfirst. With mobile phones being such personal devices, receiving opt-in savings messages from relevant businesses would be highly appealing.

Best of all in my opinion is that there’s definitely a “Green” advantage to mobile coupons in the potential to save billions of dollars in paper and printing costs!

“Green is he new black!” That’s a slogan on a T-shirt that stores like Wal-Mart are selling, and I’ve seen quite a few of them around today. Green has indeed become quite a fashion statement that transcends Earth Day.

Earth Day has come a long way since it first launched 39 years ago, and today across the United States, schools, businesses and government agencies are finding new ways to draw attention to caring for our planet. From where I stand, environmental issues are bigger news today than ever before. Environmental sustainability is a mega-trend that is inspiring innovative new products.

What is sustainability? Simply put, it’s how we meet our resource needs (water, food and energy), without compromising our ability to supply for future generations. Sustainability is how we impact the environment, our economy and our society. Innovative companies embrace sustainable “Green” policies with business strategies that are three-fold: Environmental, Economic and Social impact.

If you are truly innovative in your corporate sustainability efforts, you should be embracing new ways to decrease your environmental footprint, improve your financial bottom line and improve your interaction with your employees, your community and your world.

Disposable diapers have become a roughly $5.7 billion business, but cloth diapering is making a comeback. Here is an interesting diaper product that is not only fashionable, but environmentally friendly. They’re called gDiapers, and consist of a washable, cotton outer pant and a plastic free flushable refill. They are made of breathable material just like sports clothing, and that is what keeps the skin from getting diaper rash.

The makers encourage parents to toss flushable refills because they’re plastic-free, or garden compost the wet ones. They’ll break down in 50-150 days. Check out gDiapers here!.

Today’s new cloth diapers are different from the ones that I struggled with years ago. While approximately half of cloth users still rely on fold-and-pin diapers provided by laundry services, new designs with cutesy names like Fuzzi Bunz, bumGenius, Kissaluvs and Happy Heinys have become enormously popular with parents who want to do the right thing for the environment.

Velcro, buttons and snaps have replaced pins, and the diapers are fitted with elastic around the openings to hold tight around flailing legs. In place of old-fashioned rubber panties, the new cloths use water-resistant covers made of merino wool, nylon or polyurethane laminate.

It will be interesting to see how the disposable diaper industry responds to these next generation diapers!

I’ve had a great time meeting with packaging industry leaders this week at the 2008 Packaging Strategies Summit in Bonneventure, Florida, where I was one of the featured speakers. With so many innovative developments in packaging design, I am fascinated by how these leaders are continually coming up with great new ideas that deliver differentiation and disrupt the store aisle!

One of the challenges I often hear about is how to maintain this growth while meeting the needs of what I call the Innovation Ecosystem (which I tell my clients is a top-priority!). Today I shared with conference attendees the main elements they must focus on as they design their own packaging innovation ecosystem. Environmental, economic and social considerations are the three main forces involved in sustainable innovation.

Of course, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all ecosystem, so each company must create its own based on its unique offerings and capabilities. To build an innovation ecosystem, you need to have an open-ended sustainable outcome by looking across the design, delivery of product, how it is used and how it is disposed of. These ecosystems involve complex relationships between many players: vendors, customers, regulators, influencers, shoppers, decision makers, management, innovators, brokers, competitors and others, where simple linear chains of events are not applicable.

The business objectives should focus on how to decrease the environmental footprint, improve the financial bottom line and operate the organization ethically to improve your relationships with employees and the communities where they live and work.

We also talked about the need for developing partnerships and alliances that complete their ecosystem and deliver sustainable, innovation-driven growth. Bottom line: It’s important to choose the right partners who have the eco-friendly designs and the disposability that you don’t have within your own brick and mortar walls.

Imagine a new and revolutionary technology that will produce reliable low-cost electricity from the floors of the oceans!

Now company in the U.K. has designed the prototype for the world’s first deep-sea tidal-energy farm. The underwater tidal farm will be built off the Welsh coast starting this year to provide electricity for 5,000 homes.

Click on the picture  or right here to see a cool Web video about how this sea farm works.
Tidal energy has the potential to provide a reliable source of green energy because it is predictable and guaranteed, unlike wind turbines, which are dependent on the weather.

Construction is due to start this summer and the proposed tidal energy turbines, described as “a wind farm under the sea,” should be operational by 2010. Eight underwater turbines will be installed on the sea bottom off St David’s peninsula in Pembrokeshire, South Wales. The project off the Welsh coast is being developed in partnership between the power company E.ON and Lunar Energy and is one of several tidal energy projects being considered in British waters.

The ebb and flow of tidal waters will provide the force to turn the blades of the turbines. It can generate electricity without the huge emissions of carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. British energy companies are confident that the impact on wildlife will be minimal. The turbines revolve slowly enough for fish and other creatures to avoid being damaged by the blades.

Studies have suggested that Britain’s coastline offers enough tidal energy to supply at least 5 percent of Britain’s total electricity consumption. In U.S. dollars that translates to nearly a billion dollars a year!

Did you know that innovator Henry Ford designed cars to run on biofuels?

This week, a biofuel first for the airline industry: A Virgin Atlantic jumbo jet flew between London’s Heathrow and Amsterdam using fuel derived from a mixture of Brazilian babassu nuts and coconuts!

Biofuels are any fuels made from living things, and we often think of crops like corn as the main source. Earlier this month, Airbus tested another alternative fuel - a synthetic mix of gas-to-liquid.

The babassu tree, native to Brazil, and the coconuts did not compete with staple food sources and came from existing mature plantations. Both products are commonly used in cosmetics and household paper products.

Virgin’s Boeing 747 had one of its four engines connected to an independent biofuel tank that it said could provide 20 percent of the engine’s power. The three other engines were capable of powering the plane on conventional fuel had there been a problem.

This flight marks a vital breakthrough for the entire airline industry. But it will take some time and research before your next commercial flight goes biofuel green.

The technology is still being developed by companies GE and Boeing, but Virgin believes airlines could routinely be flying on plant power within 10 years.

One of the trends I’ll talk more about in 2008 is the movement toward eco-friendly consumer products. Our “alpha mom” is beginning to demand household cleansers that she trusts are not only safe for her home and her family, but won’t deplete the budget. One company is filling that need in a big way:

Clorox is rolling out a series of natural, biodegradable household cleaners called Green Works to its $4.8 billion family of cleaning and household products. Known for making bleach a household cleaning product more than a century ago, Clorox is the first major consumer products firm to launch such a line. Now the company has a chance to move green cleaning products beyond the niche of Whole Foods-type stores and into the wider world of Wal-Marts and suburban supermarkets.
As part of this week’s product launch, Clorox is also introducing a nationwide advertising campaign for Green Works. The products - which include a general purpose cleaner, window cleaner, toilet bowl cleaner, dilutable cleaner and bathroom cleaner – are now available in 24,000 stores nationally, including Safeway and Wal-Mart.

Clorox makes three brands of conventional all-purpose cleaners - Pine-Sol, Clorox Clean-Up and Formula 409. Because Clorox has several big brands that consumers know and trust. This latest move will definitely break down barriers for consumers who might think that natural products don’t work, they’re expensive, and you have to go to special stores to get them.

While the overall $2.7 billion market for household cleaning products isn’t growing, the so-called Green niche is. Sales of natural cleaning products rose by 23 percent between 2006 and 2007, according to SPINS, a market research and consulting firm for the natural products industry. Clorox’s own research concludes that almost half of all consumers would be interested in natural cleaning products if they were as effective as traditional ones.

This product line is at least 99 percent natural, biodegradable, nontoxic, made from plant- and mineral-based ingredients rather than petroleum, and not tested on animals. The new Green Works products will carry the logo of the Sierra Club. Clorox’s commitment to Green Works - the company’s first new brand in 20 years - is the latest evidence that environmentally-friendly products are going more mainstream.