How can you benefit from a disruptive innovation strategy?

1 Understand your customers' needs and pain points

The first step to creating a disruptive innovation strategy is to understand what your customers really need and what problems they face. You can use various methods, such as surveys, interviews, observation, or experiments, to gather insights and feedback from your target market. You should focus on finding out their jobs to be done, their desired outcomes, and their unmet or underserved needs. This will help you identify gaps and opportunities in the market that you can fill with a disruptive solution.

2 Develop a minimum viable product (MVP)

A minimum viable product (MVP) is a version of your product or service that has enough features and benefits to satisfy early adopters and test your assumptions. You should develop an MVP that solves a specific customer problem in a simple, affordable, or convenient way, and that can be launched quickly and iterated based on feedback. You should also measure and validate your MVP's performance, such as customer satisfaction, retention, referrals, or revenue, to determine if you have achieved product-market fit.

3 Find your niche and scale up

A disruptive innovation strategy often involves finding a niche market that is overlooked or ignored by the incumbents, and serving it better than anyone else. You should focus on delivering superior value to your niche customers, and building a loyal and engaged fan base. You should also look for ways to scale up your solution, such as expanding to new segments, geographies, channels, or partnerships, and leveraging network effects, economies of scale, or learning curves. You should also monitor and anticipate the reactions of the incumbents, and be ready to defend your position or pivot if necessary.

5 Keep an eye on the horizon

A disruptive innovation strategy is not a one-time event, but a continuous process. You should always keep an eye on the horizon, and scan the external environment for emerging trends, technologies, competitors, and customer preferences. You should also monitor your own performance, and constantly seek feedback from your customers, partners, and stakeholders. You should also be open to adapt and evolve your solution, and to explore new opportunities for growth and differentiation.

6 Learn from the best

A disruptive innovation strategy can be inspired by learning from the best examples of disruptive innovators in different industries and domains. You can study how they identified and exploited customer needs, how they developed and tested their MVPs, how they found and scaled their niches, how they fostered a culture of innovation and learning, and how they kept an eye on the horizon. You can also learn from their challenges, failures, and mistakes, and avoid repeating them in your own journey.