Yesterday we looked at various types of "traditional" disruptive innovations and at their 'smart cousins".
Today I promised to show some examples. Frankly I'm having a hard time trying to find a product catagory that's gone through the whole range of disruptive innovations other then cell phones. But one that does come to mind...are nails (what ? nails??? ...now you must be thinking that this Derzko characture has flipped) Bear with me.
Traditional nail have been around since the iron age, and have changed little over the ages. (if you were to go back in time and show a Roman Legion warrior a nail from today, he would likely still recognize it as a nail)
Here's a Viking blacksmith forgeing nails by hand....over time we switched to machine cut nails (disruptive platform innovation)
The iron nail components likely became more robust over time (disruptive component innovation), but not much has changed in the basic design until now.
Ed "Dr Nail" Sutt has taken 6 years to redesign the venerable nail as a better connector in hurricane force winds. (disruptive design innovation)
Sutt explains:
"when nails fail, 1 of 3 things usually happens..either the nail rips its head through the sheathing, its shank pulls out of the frame, or its midesction snaps under the lateral loads that rock a house or other structure during high winds and earthquakes. The HurriQuake nail's head is 25 per cent bigger, there's a spiral shank below that and the bottom half of the nail is encircled with angled barbs that keep the screw in place even in 170 mph winds."
How much extra does this cost over the cost of traditional nails to build a house? Just $15.
Smart Nails (still hypothetical) might incorporate future "smart dust"- like sensors to warn occupants when the roof is about to be blown off and when to evacuate.
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