On Developing Disruptive Business Ideas

Taken from DISRUPT: Think the Unthinkable to Spark Transformation in Your Business by Luke Williams, a fellow at frog design and adjunct professor at NYU Stern and a leading consultant on innovation

1. It represents a mindset—a rebellious instinct to discard old business clichés and remake the market landscape.
2. Disruptive innovation is not a tactic. It’s a mindset
3. Disruptive innovation is not just about following a process.
4. The potential for reinvention is all around us, and it’s an exciting time to be thinking about how to structure (or restructure) your business, your community, or your life in ways that create new value.
5. If you can spot the gap, you can fill the void
6. The first step is to define the situation in the industry, segment, or category that you want to challenge.
7. Focus on an industry in which everyone seems to be stuck, and nothing has changed in a very long time.
8. Identify the assumptions that seem to influence the way insiders (and often outsiders) think about your situation.
9. Think about the beliefs that govern the way people think about and do business in a particular space.
10. If you pay attention, you’ll notice that clichés are everywhere. (You’ll also notice that, almost by definition, they’ve lost their ingenuity and impact.)
11. The challenge of identifying clichés is that the most obvious and seemingly natural assumptions are the easiest to ignore.
12. Gett online and identifying a handful of direct competitors in the industry, segment, or category you’re focused on.
13. The quickest and most efficient way to do this is to explore company websites, examine their advertising, and read what people are saying about the companies and their products on blogs and other social media platforms.
14. start provoking the status quo by generating several disruptive hypotheses: example “I wonder what would happen if we ________.”
15. Look at clichés from the inside out, upside down, backward, and forward.
16. You’re looking for something (or things) that you could move in the opposite direction, or completely do without.
17. The general rule is that bolder “What Ifs” will offer a fresher perspective.