Long Nguyen
On this week topic of disruptive innovation, I read an article on how disruptive technology can even affect the whiskey industry. This is surprising to me because I did not expect disruptive technology to have such a large reach. Usually, when talking about disruptive innovation, I always thought of innovation in the a more technical sense relating to big tech companies. The article talks about how the process for making good whiskey is barrel-ageing for around 10 to 20 years. Therefore, it is extremely difficult for whiskey producer to plan for future demand as well as develop new taste. Because of this, a lot of companies are taking advantage of this opportunity and develop new ways to make whiskey faster. Using a gas chromatograph and other techniques, Endless West is foregoing barrel-ageing completely and is able to make a bottle of whiskey in 24 hours. Lost Spirits, another whiskey producer, inserts heated barrel wood into distilled spirit and blasts it in a reactor to quicken the process.
In the Innosight article, the authors assert that game-changing opportunities deliver radically new customer value propositions through fulfilling a job to be done in a dramatically better way, solving a problem that’s never been solved before, or serving an entirely unaddressed customer base. In this case, these new disruptive companies is fulfilling the job of producing whiskey much more effectively than the traditional producers. Because of the short amount of time that it takes to make the whiskey, these new and disruptive whiskey producers are able to experiment with new flavors more rapidly, maybe creating a new best-selling flavor. Despite the Scotch Whisky Association’s claim that the traditional way of making whiskey is “better”, the fact is that these disruptive producers are able to rush the production while replicating the same taste as traditionally-made whiskey. Lost Spirits’ founder claims that the new way of producing whiskey can save him $200 per bottle during production.
Are you surprised by the reach of disruptive innovation? What other surprising disruptive innovations do you know?
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