How Can Disruptive Thinking Move Your Business Forward?

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What do on-demand rental cars, music downloads, mailed DVDs, and online encyclopedias all have in common?

Each one – Zipcar, iTunes, Netflix, and Wikipedia, respectively – disrupted their industries. Their game-changing, paradigm-shifting business models challenged conventional wisdom and created a new way of adding value for their customers.

This, in a nutshell, is what disruption is all about. Rather than building on an established approach, disruptive products and services are unexpected innovations that can displace the established way of doing things.

Let’s take a look at four ways that disruptive strategies can work for your business, along with real-life examples of disruption in action:

Advantage #1: Targeting New Customer Groups

Disruptive products and services can open the door to customer groups that were previously out of reach. The idea is simple: if you can find new ways of adding value and meeting customers’ needs and wants, you’ll be able to target entirely new markets. Look at your industry from a fresh perspective. What would happen if certain rules of the game – the things that everyone takes for granted – were re-written by your business?

Disruption in Action: Apple’s iTunes offers a familiar example of disruptive technology uncovering new customer groups. Prior to iTunes, Apple had no way to take advantage of the accelerating trend from physical CDs to music downloads. Their wildly successful business model changed the game, and created a way for Apple to capture revenue from online music consumers. By 2010, iTunes accounted for more than 64% of all revenue generated in the on-demand music industry – and a healthy chunk of the company’s bottom line.

Advantage #2: Adding a New Spin on Existing Products and Services

Disruption can also put a fresh spin on something that already exists. For example, think of one of your current products or services. What would happen if you tweaked that offering in a way that challenged the conventional wisdom of your industry? You’d be leveraging what you already know, but applying that knowledge in a new way in order to better meet the needs of your target customers.

Disruption in Action: Car rentals used to be a straightforward service; no matter which company you dealt with, the customer could count on time-consuming paperwork, waiting in line, and face-to-face interaction. Zipcar flipped the script, eliminating these annoyances with on-demand, hassle-free rentals.

Advantage #3: Improving Your Internal Performance

Disruption can also happen internally, within your business. Take a look at your own workflow. If you find pain points or inefficiencies, challenge those processes! Upsetting the status quo can reveal new ways to save time and money. Internal disruptions can also provide the inspiration for disruptive products and services.

Disruption in Action: The inspiration for this disruptive business was something familiar to most entrepreneurs: revenue-draining credit card fees. Seeking to find a better way, the owner developed a solution to this problem, and in the process, designed a game-changing business model that’s taking on the entire credit card industry.

Advantage #4: Anticipating Emerging Threats

Are you in danger of being caught off guard by a competitor’s disruptive strategy? Next time you take a look at the world around you – for example, during a SWOT Analysis – take a long, hard look at your competition and their capability for disruption. Planning from this outside-the-box perspective will leave you better prepared if your industry is disrupted.

Disruption in Action: For a cautionary tale about overlooking the threat of disruption, look no further than Blockbuster. The organization’s entire business model – a highly successful approach back in the video rental days – was upended by the disruptive technology of Netflix. You know the rest of the story, but it’s not hard to imagine a different outcome if Blockbuster had paid more attention to emerging disruptive threats such as Netflix’s DVD-by-mail service.

So…How Can You Get Started?

As we’ve already seen, there are many real-life examples you can learn from as you develop your own disruptive strategies. As this article notes, many of those successful disruptions “go after an industry or process that is excruciatingly painful and make it better.”

For a different take on creating disruptions, check out this brief step-by-step guide. These steps can help you find ways to focus your disruptive energies, challenge industry clichés and conventional wisdom, and create innovative “what if” scenarios.

• If you’d like to dive deeper into the world of disruption, check out one of the in-depth books by Clayton Christensen. An expert on innovation, Christensen applies disruptive thinking to business, education, healthcare, and more. His first book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, is a good place to start.