Disruption vs. disruption theory, is it really worth arguing about it? Here’s a more actionable set of principles.
There is currently significant debate about disruption theory. Does Clayton Christensen’s theory hold true when describing what the business community describes as today’s most innovative companies? This question has garnered a lot of heated coverage in business press, probably because the word has taken on a lot more than what Christensen has defined it to be, and is used in a myriad of situations. What has resulted are cycles of attack and defense. But is this really useful for anyone? Isn’t it better to instead, focus on the ‘disruption’ that the wider public see as prevalent and try to dissect it instead of running everything through the lens of Christensen’s theory and scrutinising both in a reductivist way?
Clayton Christensen, in the Innovator’s Dilemma, argued that disruptive innovations tackle markets from the lower end, creating and marketing products that are cheaper, have fewer features yet serve a baseline level of customer needs. In simple terms, these products then progress, increase their number of features and take control of entire markets.
It is becoming clear to academics and business people alike that this can be quite limited. Christensen’s theory excludes companies like Uber, Netflix and Apple- as seen on a recent article by the Economist. These companies either offer better features or tackle higher ends of the market. Other companies that might be excluded include booking aggregators that are eroding profit margins in the hotel industry.
Given the use of the word ‘disruption’ today, and putting Christensen’s theory aside, how can we come up with actionable design principles for groundbreaking, market shaking, ‘disruptive’ innovations in accordance with what the majority of the business community know them to be?
If we look at companies that have changed the way we do things- Facebook, Apple, Twitter- companies that would usually escape the grasp of Christensen’s theory, and even companies that are not generally disruptive but gain a lot of traction at the expense of other pre-existing players, for example, fast fashion retailing, we see some similar characteristics.
These companies drastically reframe their categories, blurring or combining differing market boundaries: PDAs get combined with phones, physical drivers with tracking technologies. But this isn’t enough, the second element is that new features are introduced that are initially groundbreaking but become industry standards. In other words, these products become benchmarks. If you want to measure disruption as its known, you would also notice that there is a critical level of market share that must be reached.
Disruption as we know it would also entail companies being more in tune with latent customer needs. Products and services that spread generally tune in to higher order needs like authenticity, simplicity or connectivity. A superficial examination of Facebook, Apple and Air BnB would suggest that this is the case.
So in summation, a preliminary look at what we know to be disruption involves:
- Reframing and blurring categories
- Products that become benchmarks for quality
- Critical market share
- Tune into higher order needs.
If you look at these four categories it might become clear that each element except no.3, which is more a result, is driven by shifts in thinking rather than rapid technological development. The first involves reframing, the second human centred design, the fourth in-depth research. Quality benchmarking of course is heavily influenced by technological development- but process development might equally lead to better outcomes in this regard.
In the simplest terms, these products are fundamentally designed better. They are designed for meaning and for customers, with less regard for the pre-existing state of the landscape. Entrepreneurs seem to know that looking past the existing state of play and to truly focus on the needs of the consumer will inevitably lead to breakthrough solutions. It’s very much the case of the runner who keeps his eye on the finish line because he knows that if he runs as fast as he can his fellow racers won’t matter. Disruption as we know it is about designing for the end goal: discovering and meeting hidden needs.
By John Corleto
