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YOUR OBJECTIVES

Our research and fieldwork suggests that disruptive innovations have the greatest chance of creating blockbuster growth. Disruptive innovations either create new markets or reshape existing markets by delivering relatively simple, convenient, low-cost innovations to a set of customers whose jobs-to-be-done are ignored by industry leaders.

We would characterize an innovation as “disruptive” by asking these questions:

  1. Does it target an important job-to-be-done? We look beyond traditional definitions of an industry to understand the true jobs that customers are trying to get done, and the full suite of offerings they use to accomplish these jobs. We define an industry from the customer's viewpoint, not the company's. 
  2. Does it get the “gives” and “gets” right? A disruptive innovation trades off performance along one dimension for performance along another, such as simplicity, convenience, ability to customize, or price. The key is to know which tradeoffs the consumer is willing to make.
  3. Does the business model limit fixed investment to maximize flexibility while thinking creatively about early sources of revenue? Our mantra is “be patient for growth, impatient for profits.”
  4. Is the offering something that incumbents are not motivated to pursue? It has been proven time and time again that disruptive innovations have the highest chance of success in markets that powerful competitors are motivated to flee or ignore.

If a strong incumbent is motivated to fight a battle, it will likely win. To capitalize on a truly disruptive opportunity, firms need to get to market quickly, with companies that will tolerate a less-than-perfect solution, and then learn by doing. Real feedback from the marketplace is infinitely more instructive than countless hours at a whiteboard mapping the hypothetical solution.

Specific ways in which we help our clients find such opportunities and drive growth include:

  • Balance Innovation Portfolios — a consulting effort aimed at helping companies first evaluate their current pipeline of ideas and innovations to ensure those with truly disruptive potential are given the resources required to succeed, and then second, formalize the evaluation models to maintain a healthy portfolio mix going forward.
  • Generate New Ideas — a consulting effort that begins with the consumers’ views of their jobs to be done, and then looks beyond the product or service opportunities to uncover how changes to the business model may further enable these consumers and non-consumers to complete their job more effectively, thus driving new growth.
  • Take Ideas to Market with Emergent Strategies — a consulting effort that applies our “test and learn” approach to new product development to the practice of business model innovation, essentially looking for low-cost ways to evaluate the target customers’ acceptance of, and satisfaction with, the proposed model.
  • Innosight Labs — a low-cost, offshore-based approach to rapid prototyping that allows you to produce physical samples of ideas under consideration, to enable more effective target customer evaluations yielding more constructive feedback.