Disruption-2022
"Disruption" is rampant around us & its no surprise how it has become a catch-phrase today. It takes quite a magnitude of thinking & execution to be the driving force behind such a market-mover.
Often times we have seen how some product’s releases over the course of the 2 decades have taken a market entirely by storm and have managed to change the way people think, work and live. And when we are addressing that part, it is often a complete turned-on-the-head sort of a change as opposed to and given what was happening in that space earlier.
The one word that describes this entire process is “DISRUPTION”.
Most of you remember ORKUT, don’t you!?
Well! It was fairly simple really.
You get onto the site and just create an account with a few basic parameters filled in which mostly determine your identity in helping people out there recognize and connect to you and vice versa. And, I can vouch that it is true for most of us - we have got back in touch with so many of our lost friends, contacts, acquaintances from our previous stints over schools, colleges, universities, work et. al.
When most people were reminiscing old times of the days bygone and wondering about what happened to their friends, here was an online platform that was screaming out to them, “Hey Listen! Get onto Orkut and look for that person and maybe you’d find what you’re looking for”.
Slowly the idea got blown-up over creating online and public communities for school / universities and everyone who identified with a stint there hitting the JOIN button and being a part of it. It also became a de-facto route to search for those lost friends / acquaintances.
On the ideation side of things, Orkut certainly was an example of a totally new entrant into a niche market that had no prior players, and even if they did it was limited to a certain close-knit private community that was majorly restricted and unavailable at a global scale over public domain.
And, of course then came Facebook who disrupted it even further.
The same example of a concept when apportioned to refer to the Technology space transforms into what is known as “Disruptive Technology” for instance AI, ML it is in today’s parlance.
Normally when such a disruptive tech product hits the market / comes to light, it is really fascinating to watch the adoption patterns over a short period of time post its release something like the graph here below.
Within quick time a really large section of the market leaves whatever they have been using up until that point onwards and straight away hop on to the new product which they largely believe solves some prevalent problems over time, cost, scope etc. or simplifies things greatly.
But, how and what makes it possible to create something of that stature?
Is it a vague IDEA alone that perhaps is an extension of a figment of someone’s imagination?
Is it something to do with studying, applying & pivoting on latest technology trends?
Or does it have more angles to it?
At the CORE of DISRUPTION!
Think about this for a while. Over you daily tasks for you to drop whatever products you are putting to use right now to get some job done and hop onto something that is completely new, how easy is that going to be & what level of motivation would it take?
Would you say these mostly cover your fleeting thoughts?
Learning Cycle – Time spent over getting accustomed to the new product
Usability & Ease of getting the job done
Cost / Expenditure involved
Longevity / Value added over a long period of time
Disruption / Disruptive Tech could lead to providing a totally satisfying “YES” to all these criteria quote above here motivating large user groups to adopt the new product seamlessly into their lives, most times replacing what product they are already using.
A Disruptive strategy is nothing less than a super-bold step by an organization and it could work wonders if your product and its features on offer is able to sensationalize the broader markets and create a drag by not only attracting the existing users who are hooked onto products by your competition but also be able to pull those people sitting on the fence & other side of the fence so to speak.
Such a strategy usually hinges on & chiefly feeds off one thing!
…and, that is “INNOVATION”.
Innovating over absolutely unthinkably new ways to achieve things is the fuel that the engine of disruption runs and thrives on. And sadly, there is no courseware / courses or even a regular framework that can be used to transfer this skill because it could be typical of a situation and deeply correlated to an individual’s vision. The only way to perhaps accomplish / find some success in it is by gaining years and years of eclectic experience and exposure to many aspects / nuances of the real world.
Great innovation & what it takes!
I remember popping this question to my mentees over a session and the answer I got was “Ideas”. Well, that may be so. But, some ideas that have been thought of so many years back are still great even today, like for instance the very cliched product example - Zero Gravity Pen / Space Pen.
A basic search on the internet yields Fischer Space Pens.
They are listed at under US $25 a piece.
Here is a link to the website in case you are interested in exploring these pens: https://www.spacepen.com/
Onto an excerpt from their website…
“Fisher products: they will write upside down - at any angle, under water, through grease, extreme temperatures (-30 to +250 degrees F), on almost any surface, three times longer than the average pen, and of course in the gravity free vacuum of space, and all of our pens are lifetime guaranteed for quality against all manufacturing defects.”
After many years of tireless research and about US $1million these products were made and first released in 1965 and “they can write anywhere even upside down” is their primary product offering and quite rightly is used as a tag-line over the product packaging as also their ads.
Here is the branding and product packaging.
The Use Cases
And of course, am sure it had its uses too.
But were they meant to capture a wider segment of the market?
Well! Back then, am not quite sure how many of us would have wanted to own a zero-gravity pen really, and come to think of it am sort of sure the numbers wouldn’t be all that encouraging even today. With the whole use case and the user persona itself pointing to a highly segmented audience / sample space TAM (Total Addressable Market) back then may have been beaten down.
So, that example right there is an instance of a great idea which may have also been truly pathbreaking when it was launched back in 1965. And, it could be termed as a great innovation for sure.
But, was it DISRUPTIVE? No. Absolutely not.
Now consider this, we all have used pens and some of us still do use one of them on a regular day-to-day basis. How many of us have even heard of the name Fischer Space Pens?
There is a whole world of a difference between ideas, innovation & disruption. There can be tons of good ideas and with some of that extra thoughts and efforts one could also earn the “great innovation” label too. But, Disruption would be possible when the products are able to capture the imagination of a really large audience that is supposedly greater than the size of the total addressable market and that could only be possible when the products are envisioned, built after spending ample time understanding the users and their current motivations.
Here is a sectional view of the aspects we covered so far over and how it fits into the whole space and what it could take to build disruptive products that could boast of high to extraordinary user adoption levels post release.
