There is a term used by entrepreneurs, investors and analysts to
describe almost any new technology product that enters the market – disruptive.
Sounds all exciting and cool to a lot of folk and maybe it is right for some
products and ideas, but with a marketing and commercialization hat on
describing something as disruptive when it really isn’t has a lot of risk
associated with it.
By definition disruptive products completely change the way a market
does something. As a result they have a tendency to appeal to early adopters,
which for truly disruptive products is great because it gets your sales
started. There is however a downside and it is really simply that the early
adopter segment accounts for less than 5% of virtually all marketa, which
kind of limits the speed at which you can grow your sales.
The vast majority of every market is, as we all know uncomfortable
with change, preferring to wait for everyone else to jump first – just try
selling anything new to a legal or accountancy firm in the UK and you’ll see
what we mean.
On the other hand evolution is a much less scary concept. We all do
that and we all like to think we evolve and change with the times so that we
keep mostly up to date. Evolution is a mass market concept, it’s not
frightening, in fact it feels good, because it means we aren’t having to throw
the baby out with the bath water and learn something again from scratch.
There are lots of other dimensions to this, but to keep this nice and light for a Friday afternoon we thought it would be better just to float the idea with you.
So here’s a little question for you. Which feels better, owning a
really cool disruptive product that appeals to less than 5 percent of the
market, or owning an evolutionary product that appeals to a much larger segment
of the market?
By Tim Sandford
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