Ah, the war between strategy planning and gut feeling, existing markets and unknown markets, your customers’ needs today and new customers’ needs tomorrow.
Boy, do I have a lot of stories here.
Link: All Good Things…. – Innoblog.
Disruption is hard. That’s why so many companies fall victim to the forces of disruption. The case of Western Union demonstrates just one reason why. When evaluating new and unknown markets, traditional methods of analysis fall short. Western Union’s evaluation of the telephone was perfectly logical. Their business model was built around long distance communication – reporting news and conducting business. In that model, there was no need for a technology that transmitted a very low quality voice signal over short distances. Even assuming some technological advances, the managers at Western Union could not envision business uses of the telephone.
Traditional analysis failed. An approach built around low risk market tests – planning to learn – was required. Such an approach allows for strategies to be developed and business models to be adjusted as more is learned about the market. When the market is unknown, the only guarantee is that initial models will be wrong. Adopting a process that recognizes this fact is one of the keys to being a good disruptor.
