Disruption by Design: How to Create Products that Disrupt and then Dominate Markets

From Eli Whitney to Henry Ford to Ray Kroc to Steve Jobs, market disruptors have reaped the benefits, including fame and fortune. But do you have to be that rare genius whose unique skills can literally change the world? No. Disrupting a market is a discipline that can be learned. Disruption by Design—a handbook for entrepreneurs, CEOs, product developers, innovators, and others who want to build products or create services that systematically disrupt markets—is the first book that shows you how.

There is a huge difference between being an "innovator" and being a "disruptive innovator." Disruptors change the basis for competition in markets, and they end up controlling market share—typically 40 to 80% of the total revenue and half or more of the total profits in the categories they create. But while many market opportunities have disruptive potential, only a small fraction of those ever succeed in disrupting markets. And, too often, those that do disrupt do so by accident.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Disruption by Design conveys lessons learned from successful disruptors, and from the many companies that should have disrupted but failed. Beginning with a quick review of the theory and key elements of the patterns of disruptive innovations and how to identify ideas with disruptive potential, Disruption by Design guides you through the design, build, and go-to-market phases that successful disruptors follow.

Using many examples of disruptive companies and products, this book takes the popular theory of disruptive innovation and drives it down to the level of practical application. It answers the question, "How do I create a disruptive company, product, and culture?" Disruption by Design:

• Goes beyond describing how disruptive innovation happens, and answers and explains the all-important "why."
• Provides a "where-to-look" guide for discovering disruptive opportunities.
• Shows you how to predict when market disruption is likely.
• Outlines the necessary ingredients and elements of corporate strategy that maximize the probability of being disruptive.
• Provides a roadmap to disruptive success, from the initial idea through product launch to actual market disruption.
• Shows how to stay atop the market and not be the next victim of a new disruptor.
• Includes the Disruption by Design Canvas, for mapping a disruptive business model.

Most important, Disruption by Design articulates a step-by-step process for developing a product and marketing strategy—and a business model design—that maximizes the probability of successful market disruption.

What you’ll learn

• Assess whether your ideas have disruptive potential
• Design a business model that enables disruption to occur
• Create a business and marketing strategy for your disruptive product
• Test and validate the right “jobs to be done” for your product
• Avoid preventable traps that can keep innovations from winning in the market
• Learn to be a serial disruptor and stay on top once you get there

Who this book is for

Disruption by Design is for startup entrepreneurs and innovators who have ideas with the power to transform the world and how we live, and who need to know how to achieve their market-disrupting potential. It’s for the Silicon Valley startup building tomorrow’s technology, the basement workshop inventor, or the corporate “intrapreneur” working within a larger company to bring products to market that define and dominate new categories. Disruption by Design guides companies and individuals through the process of implementing products, services, and business models that change markets.

About the Author

Paul Paetz is the CEO of Innovative Disruption, a consultancy that works with innovators to help bring disruptive ideas to fruition and market success. His deep knowledge of the patterns of disruption was first acquired the hard way back in the 1980s, when he began his career as a marketer, product manager, and senior sales executive with a highly innovative and generally profitable software company a company that could have, but didn t, disrupt the market. Influenced by the ideas of Geoffrey Moore (Crossing the Chasm) Clayton Christensen (The Innovator s Dilemma), Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point), and others, Paetz came up with his own tool that allowed him to predict who was likely to disrupt a market and who wasn t. After starting a marketing services company in 2002, Paetz later joined The Disruption Group, a consultancy that specialized in providing advisory services to potential disruptors as well as companies in industries suffering disruption. In 2008, he started his second company, Innovative Disruption, to address the needs of startups with disruptive potential, their investors, and larger companies in markets disrupted by upstarts. Paetz is the creator of the Disruption Report Card, a tool that scores disruptive potential. He is the author of the popular blog Disrupt This.