Classifying innovation according to its types is important because one size does not truly fit all. The more you know about innovation types and shapes it takes, the easier you will lead your company regarding its innovative products or services. By the end of this article, you will find out what is a radical innovation type and how it behaves in the practice.

Fundamentally different from incremental innovation is radical innovation. It is about changes to current businesses connected with the exploration of new technologies and markets. Radical innovation is also considered as a revolutionary or breakthrough innovation.

Displacing an earlier technology creates a platform for additional improvements for this new technology (more incremental innovation). This is useful when you want to achieve a long-term impact on future development, creating and establishing new fields of study. 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. Digital cameras have been replaced with new technology that integrates it with our personal mobile devices ‒ smartphones. You see where this is going. Breakthrough technologies can also be displaced by new radical innovations. The matter of execution of every innovation depends on its type and, in that regard, performing incremental and radical changes is not done the same way. For example, incremental innovation does not have the same degree of novelty and originality because it is considered to encompass mere modifications of existing inventions.

When you are dealing with radical innovation, you need advanced research and need to think more in terms of the ‘bottom-up’ innovation model. Collecting undirected creativity may show you the path for some new, radical innovations. Now, this can sound a bit exhausting and time-consuming but you wouldn’t be reading this if there aren’t companies established to make this task easier for you. Innovation Cloud is a place where radical innovation starts and then develops until ultimately greets its customers at the market.

Idea generation (bottom-up in this case) is just the first step in the innovation process, and to conduct it properly it is important to have an easy to use and intuitive idea management system. Innovation Cloud collects ideas from all your employees and showcases them in a transparent and adequate way. Also, it lets you shortlist the best ones, which is a time saver, and adds focus on their further development. It is now easy to move from the original concept of selected idea to its enriched version, and do it in collaboration with their inventors.