Alltrikes

Maybe for general aviation to survive, we need more disruption.

An article published in Wired magazine (Clayton Christensen Wants to Transform Capitalism, by Jeff Howe) discussed how successful companies often fail to recognize that new companies with “disruptive innovations” are about to take over their marketplace.

As Howe wrote, “Successful businesses, Christensen explained, are trained to focus on what he calls sustaining innovations—innovations at the profitable, high end of the market, making things incrementally bigger, more powerful, and more efficient. The problem is that this leaves companies vulnerable to the disruptive innovations that emerge in the murky, low-margin bottom of the market. And this is where the true revolutions occur, creating new markets and wreaking havoc within industries. Think: the PC, the MP3, the transistor radio.”

There may be parallels in the general aviation industry, which by all accounts is still stagnating. Maybe some disruption would help.

For example, when Embraer made a strong push into the business aviation market with new clean-sheet designs, that was disruptive. And the old-line manufacturers did little, at the time, to counter this disruption. Cessna finally scrambled to field new models to compete with Embraer and the former Hawker Beechcraft experienced a wrenching bankruptcy, shutting down its jet manufacturing business in the process. Should these companies have moved faster to counter Embraer’s disruption? Probably, but maybe no one recognized the disruption.

For another example, Garmin recently revealed that an internal group called Team X has been developing low-cost but powerful avionics for the experimental market. While these avionics are built and tested to high standards, they don’t meet all of the certification requirements that avionics for certified aircraft must meet. Yet the builder of an experimental airplane can fly IFR in instrument meteorological conditions with experimental avionics, sharing the same airspace with the rest of the certified aviation world. These experimental avionics sell for far, far less than their equivalent certified big brothers, but are probably just as reliable and safe. Disruptive? I think so.

For the remainder of the article, click HERE