4.0 Experts Discussion: How to develop a disruptive idea
The primary research described in Literature Review shows that a startup’s disruptive potential can be assessed and cultivated as well as its ability to innovate if it receives the help of relevant behavior techniques, such as questioning, observing, networking, and experimenting.
The creation of new ideas is based on a combination of the existing ones.
In order to have a multi-sided vision on how a disruptive startup can be created and find similarities and differences by means of using a Literature review, I interviewed thirteen industry experts from the following creative agencies: AKQA, Evolver in London, SpacePortX, The Curiosity Bureau and Amity in Manchester, Snook in Glasgow, founders of startups Made with Glove, FinalFling, ShinDigger Brewing Co. and Fevue, and two representatives of a disruptive startup, Airbnb in San Francisco and Singapore.
The questions concerned the more practical side of the issue: disruption’s values, advantages, drivers and barriers, disruptive methodologies, as well as current trends and tips in developing a disruptive startup in its early stages.
In this chapter all the interviews are summarized and presented mainly as key statements due to confidential agreement.
Disruption is a part of human nature
“Disruption is a part of the human condition. No matter what life you live and what might happen, some people need outlet and they need disruption. — Katie Funnel, Amity
The biggest difference between a literature review and experts discussion lies in the disruptors’ human nature — love, passion, empathy — as drivers for disruption. This is a strong power that carries the idea through all the obstacles.
Accepting disruption as a part of human nature is a crucial insight. It explains the human passion for changing the things whose previous potential has not been served. Though disruption as a simple word is normally seen as in some way having a negative context “to break apart”, “to interrupt”, in reference to digital and innovation it may be assigned a better purpose.
Disruption allows for more control over the problem. For example, Netflix as a brand disrupted a television broadcasting market, but if you are a consumer of Netflix, you are managing your content there and it’s disrupting your life, your experience, because you’re looking for it to do that, you actually want to disrupt your life which becomes more under your control.
The counterintuitive nature of disruption is expressed not only in its word meaning — the negative context for a better purpose, — but also in ideas and behavioral adoption.
People need time and to be first involved in experience to test the idea that is going to be a part of their future behavior. These first hard stages of adoption create the challenge for more creativity or failure.
When we examine counterintuitive ideas, we see confirmed Paul Paetz’ concept of Scarcity. The guys from Airbnb started to seek the finances and one of startup investors said “this is the worst idea I’ve ever heard”. The best startups are those with “crazy stupid ideas”, because an amazing idea means something obvious. Disruptive startup is counterintuitive.
These remarks prove that a disruptive startup at its early stage is hard to identify — only a disruptive potential can be assessed.
Though a disruptive nature has a “hidden power” during its early stages and often seems to contain an almost exotic power during its growth period, which gives rise to the temptation to analyze it and view it as some kind of panacea, it is not formed of the substance of a definite, specific goal, indeed not. It is always more of a process, a happening, a form of pure energy. For humans with good intention to solve a problem, disruption serves as a big power, because they first think of customers and users, their problems.
The first goal of a disruptive startup is to provide a great experience for customers, to make their life better and simpler in some way.
The discussion’s results was narrowed down to the following principles:
- empathy as a driver for disruption
- personal intention to challenge status quo
- creative skills to solve a problem
- agile and human-centered methodology
In terms of disruptive methodologies, trends that nowadays can be outlined due to constantly developing ecosystem for startups and disruptive cases have been outlined in terms of trends by professional analysts, as follows:
- social experience
- connecting the existing markets
- system design and narrative framework
Empathy as a driver for disruption
In terms of thinking about customers and their needs to be satisfied and problems to be solved, there should be a sufficient understanding of customer.
Vimla Appadoo, in her presentation in London regarding disruption trends, outlines the role of human empathy in understanding customers.
To get a really exciting disruptive product you really see what already exists and really empathize with the user in order to see what he finds frustrating, and this understanding of frustration leads towards disruption. Changing that part of the journey where users have this frustration is critical. Thus frustration is established as a driver for disruption.
Empathy + Understanding = Innovation
Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is a trigger for empathy, and, of course, understanding is the foundation of empathy. Roman Krznaric, a cultural thinker and a Founder of the world’s first Empathy Museum concept and the digital Empathy library, advocates empathy as an essential clue towards understanding people. He argues that our brains are wired for social connection: empathy is at the heart of who we are. It’s an essential, transforming quality which we must develop for the 21st Century. “I believe that empathy — the imaginative act of stepping into another person’s shoes and viewing the world from their perspective — is a radical tool for social change and should be a guiding light for the art of living.” (Romankrznaric.com) It is essential for user-centered approach.
Vimla presents five types of scenarios that requires empathy and understanding, which in turn leads to innovation.
- Triggers for use in building journey map with pain-points.
- Environment for finding pain-points.
- User customization in their experience, behavior, habits.
- Intangible attributes to match a startup brand with the goal which it is trying to achieve.
- Unarticulated users’ needs that are usually not obvious and often hidden.
Empathy and understanding the customers’ needs is closely connected to intention to solve a problem.
Intention to challenge a status quo
The bright example was presented by Michelle Hua, a founder of a startup “Made With Glove” . When she visited Prague in winter, the temperature was -21 С and her hands were frozen even in her gloves, and, coming back home, she decided to conduct research towards discovering gloves that might actually keep her hands warm, but instead found only unattractive bulky alternatives.
The idea to create fashionable gloves with digital elements that can keep hands warm began to absorb her mind so much that she started to develop this project in Manchester and nowadays cooperates with Manchester University and participates in startup programs that are awarded grant for the development of such gloves. “When I talked to people about my idea, I found that it is actually needed for medical purposes. There is something called Raynaud’s (ray-NOHZ) disease. 10 million people in the UK suffer from it. And 90% are woman. I thought “this is a market.” (Hua, 2015).
Barbara Chalmers, Founder of FinalFling.com, was one of the first people in Scotland who decided to rethink traditional funerals and created a web-site for pre-planning services. The driver for this decision was her personal unpleasant experience with arranging funerals. This experience pushed her to change her profession while still using her marketing background in order to develop the idea of preplanning and presenting different innovative options. “Just to show people a new vision, amazing things they can do to be personal and to be customized by doing and developing the idea - that is a sense of unbelievable massive disruption.” (Chalmers, 2015).
No matter what field a startup has and what profession a founder had in the past it is impossible to make things differently without creative skills.
Creative skills to solve a problem
“Being creative is something within you. You can learn some principles, but everything you need is achieved only by thinking outside the box. — Michelle Hua, Made with Glove
A story of Airbnb shows the importance of creativity in working process. When the founders were just getting started, they had no way to fund and support the Airbnb platform. No one wanted to invest in their project at that time. They needed an idea how to get money.
It was during the McCain-Obama election, so they decided to turn boxes of Cheerios and Captain Crunch into political schwag. They designed a limited creative package of cereal boxes and created a new brand on the election campaign. And that creative case helped them to earn $30,000 and keep their project afloat. Afterwards, this creative campaign which demonstrated the founders’ creative skills was the main spark toward raising funding from a startup accelerator Y Combinator.
It shows that this is not about adhering to the rules, but being creative to solve a problem and create additional revenue.
Even after becoming a big global brand, Airbnb’s culture kept the drive for creativity.
Agile and user-centered
“Now this is a tradition to become user-centered, because we need to feel empathy to our user. - Rebecca Taylor, The Curiosity Bureau
No matter how unique the idea, it usually comes to different minds all at once. To be successful a startup should be fast in iterations to acquire its users. To be faster also means constant testing and getting feedback to be closer to the customers.
Value proposition,Customers, Problem — are three main elements. What pains you are going to take away, what pleasure and benefits you’re providing.
Being agile and human-centered is the shortest way to validate a startup.
Validation can be judged on the project growth and a core KPI. It needs to be tangible, otherwise there is no point of doing work, it’s just flowing. Setting KPI in the begging to have the goal.
The growth is not only a good sign of disruptive potential, but also essential for revenue streams. Revenue stream is what is needed to have from day one; otherwise, no one invest in a startup. It can be a small revenue stream which sticks the project to reality.
One of successful examples is the startup “Slack” — a project management tool of internal communication. Their growth was extreme — in only 14 months they already have 200,000 paying customers and 700,000 users. The growth projection was so strong that they received an evaluation of 2.8 mln dollars within 14 months.
To summarize, a disruption’s mission — to improve people’s lives and to solve their problems by providing a better solution with the help of digital. Passion and empathy are big drivers for disruption to understand customers’ needs and to convince others to love your idea. Be creative, agile and human-centered to generate the growth and thus a revenue stream.
The assumption that disruption is an essential element in the passage from traditional industry to digital in the pursuit of uncovering its potential and discovering its opportunities by merging existing practices and thus making people’s lives better was confirmed by Mary Wallace from AKQA:
“I’m going to speak next week at a digital conference. And the purpose of it is just you’ve said — identifying the emergence of disruptive ideas and pieces of innovation and then bringing those inventors together with business community, people who know how to run and structure a startup and putting those two communities together to see what they come up with to create a good value proposition. This is exactly what you’ve just said.” (Wallace, 2015).
In terms of conditions for creating disruption and innovation, Matthias Schuecking from Airbnb confirmed the assumption that culture and environment are better than any rules:
“I think it’s we are at a place right now where you can feel that you’re the part of something very important. It’s a movement. It’s a community rather than seeing yourself as a prime disruptor. In the company we have a promise to change the world we’re living today, changing the way we go and the way we do marketing. I think being innovative in our approach is a vital part of our core value.” (Schuecking, 2015).
