Wednesday, 16 November 2016

Week 4 [14.11-20.11.2016] Disruptors – companies which are shifting the goalposts


At the beginning I want to explain what “disruptor companies” are. In business, it relates to radicall changes in industry or a business strategy, which leads to the lunch of a new product or service on the market. Disruptor companies completely change the way of thinking about a product and how it should be developed on the market. These innovative companies reorganize the market-- all companies have to reorganize their business models.

I recommend watching this short movie about the disruptive innovation:


Big potential of the Internet causes that more and more young people use such products and services like: Uber, Airbnb, Spotify, Netflix and many others. Nowadays people are looking for innovative companies. They don’t want to call a taxi, but they ‘d rather click one button in an app and be in a car going to their destination point. People don’t want to call to rent an apartment, they’d rather use Airbnb application, which will help them contact apartment owners directly.   Old, boring and outdated products are no longer interesting. Disruptors break all existing norms and create products, which people are not able to live without.

A few example companies:

1. Uber

http://www.businessofapps.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/video.yahoofinance.com@40d2db72-2976-37c8-b12d-b4858de5bb20_FULL.jpg

Uber is an American industry, a creator of mobile application called the same name as the company. This application is described as a tool which is connecting a passenger with the driver. After pushing the button a request is send to the driver. After a few minutes a driver who is using his own car will drive you around the city. Around the Uber topic, there are many discussions about the legality of its business. Uber company disrupted the taxi market with theirs applications which leaded the simplicity of using. For me all this noise about Uber companies is caused by the case that Uber left everyone behind with their innovative product. It offers a service that is much cheaper from standard taxi and much enjoyable to use. This company shows how much this modern service with a little bit of different thinking have changed the taxi industry.


2. Airbnb
http://suitelife.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/airbnb-a8707ed9_original.jpg

Airbnb is a peer-to-peer online marketplace network that allows people to rent their houses to people who are looking for some apartment to sleep. This company was founded in 2008 and now its fortune is valuated between 10 to 25 billion dollars. This big platform and application is making a big disruption in the hotel industry.

https://e27.co/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/disruption.png

I think that if you want to build a brand, disruption, innovation and a completely new way of thinking should be your main goal. I want to finish my presentation with a sentence which Richard Branson said. He is an English business magnate, investor and philanthropist, founder of the Virgin Group which controls more than 400 companies. I totally agree with this statement, said by a man who is wealthy and whose companies are disruptor on many markets.  

“Disruption is all about risk-taking, trusting your intuition, and rejecting the way things are supposed to be. Disruption goes way beyond advertising, it forces you to think about where you want your brand to go and how to get there.”

1. Do you know any well-known companies which disrupt the market?
2. What action should companies take to react to disruptors? What should they do to stay on the market?
3. Do you think disruption always comes with innovation?


Sources:


24 comments:

  1. Do you know any well-known companies which disrupt the market?
    I have two examples:
    Skype, Messenger - Users can communicate with the whole world not paying for mobile operators services.



    Bla Bla car - a person traveling together to the same place. They are Sharing fuel bill causes cut costs, and not in the way that the fuel industry.

    2. What action should companies take to react to disruptors? What should they do to stay on the market?

    I believe that such companies that are "lost" item should open up more to the customer in terms of interacting with it through software applications. They also can still create your own application. People who use their services will be even more willing to use them because they will be even easier and new customers appreciate the quality of services and new business opportunities.


    3. Do you think disruption always comes with innovation?
    In my opinion, disturbance does not always come with innovation even though it is one of the main factors for this. Interference can also be caused by eg. A decrease in the quality of services offered by one company relative to the other, which it competes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Bla bla car is I a great example of disruptor company. It caused that many people will use this application to go where they want, instead of using normal form of transport like bus or train.
      Messenger is an application that I use quite often. I agree with you that you don’t have to pay for the mobile operator services, but the one thing you need is an access to the Internet, but that costs a lot less.

      Delete
  2. 1. Do you know any well-known companies which disrupt the market?
    2. What action should companies take to react to disruptors? What should they do to stay on the market?
    3. Do you think disruption always comes with innovation?

    Yea, there are plenty of examples. I think one that should be mention in faceboook and google. They born a lot time ago but they change the world and culture. Now almost everybody who use internet use these tools. They were made from need and they do it well. At the time they start, there was other companies that use the same idea. They wasn't so special and they do not invent the wheel again, they just do it good and they can scale to whole globe.
    I think every competition and innovation is great, if some technology can help me to safe my one hour of my time then I want it. This is simple as that, and I cheers most of these companies. Innovation is related to these companies. Definition of this world is not so simple, but I think if new company do something a little bit different and this is helpfull for some peoples then it's good. Every small daily innovation make big difference in perspective of few years.
    I like this topic, thanks Mikolaj

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I am glad that you enjoyed the topic. The subject of innovation is very interesting. I am always searching for tools that will help me to make some things faster. We use smartphones for many purposes. I think that applications on smartphones are helping us in our daily routines.

      Delete
  3. 1. Do you know any well-known companies which disrupt the market?
    2. What action should companies take to react to disruptors? What should they do to stay on the market?
    3. Do you think disruption always comes with innovation?

    1. Yes, everybody who use smartphones heard about some. I think that one of the most surprising for us, especially older not "computerized" people might be the new way of Instagram usage. This application entirely revolutionized the way of brands promoting.

    2. Companies should accept the permamently changing technology development, also disrupors existence. They shouldn't letf behin with such solutions and try to find the best, adapted for their customers' needs and most of all practical and simple way of usage.

    3. In my opinion it is great idea to use innovative technologies which accompanies us everyday. If innovation includes practical, facilitating solutions, available for particular customers, then I would definitely agree with that thesis.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you for your comment. The application which comes to my mind, similar to Instagram is Snapchat. Many companies thanks to this application can promote their brands. If you are interested in some products or company, the one think you need is to add an appropriate profile to your account and wait for Snap.

      Delete
  4. 1. Do you know any well-known companies which disrupt the market?
    2. What action should companies take to react to disruptors? What should they do to stay on the market?
    3. Do you think disruption always comes with innovation?

    1.
    Every generation and every technology has its own diruptors. I think everyone heard about this kind of companies like Uber lately.
    2.
    It's a market thing, when competitors do something innnovative you try to outreach them or you lose. Lose clients, market.
    3.
    All disruptors are innovative but not all innovations are disruptive. As I see it disruption is about changing the way people think about something (technology i.e.), of how do they use it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, I agree with you. Every generation of companies have its disruptors on market. Nowadays they are more and more this kind of companies. I think that people who create product which will make disruption on market, will earn a lot of money.

      Delete
  5. 1. Do you know any well-known companies which disrupt the market?
    In some way: Spotify, sites like Groupon (but it's increasingly worse and worse...), BlaBlaCar, Uber (it is the best example due to a big indignation of standard-taxi drivers. Recently I love reading about all "złotówa" actions. It always puts a smile on my face. Just the way they are thinking, haha.), Tesla.

    2. What action should companies take to react to disruptors? What should they do to stay on the market?
    Mostly there is only one, but great solution. To stop to rip off from clients. And again - best example: taxi drivers. Just read the news. You can be sure, that you will read at least once per week: Taxi driver cheated clients. Of course their regular prices are too big also. About their culture and approach to people I even don't mention.
    Another solution: smaller one, but also important due to digitization of society: make life and using of services easier. People doesn't like to waste time for calling and telling where they are, what they want. People already sold all informations about themselfs (to Google, Facebook and specific apps). So you should knew all about their preferences. Now they want just to click once and forgot about it (Uber, BlaBlaCar, AirBNB etc).

    3. Do you think disruption always comes with innovation?
    In these times: yes. It is because of progressive digitization of society.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Very interesting examples of reacting on disruptors. I totally agree with these examples. Now we live in the world of availability. Everything is available by the one click. If you don’t like this company, you can change it. If you don’t like this product, you have many others to choose. If the company don’t want to lose customers, they should take care of them, not to cheat on prices like taxi drivers do.

      Delete
  6. 1. Do you know any well-known companies which disrupt the market?
    On the market there are a lot big, well name company. The best example is facebook or google, which place on the market is stability. Next big company on the world is company where I'm work, Securitas, whose has on the world big place in guardian market. For today this company, has branch in 59 countries and still grown.
    2. What action should companies take to react to disruptors? What should they do to stay on the market?
    I think that, this company should go with trend's in his business sector and every day thinking many innovation.
    3. Do you think disruption always comes with innovation?
    Not always, but innovation is part of keep on market

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Google and Facebook have stability on market, but of course they are introducing products that disrupt the market. Thanks for your comment.

      Delete
  7. 1. Do you know any well-known companies which disrupt the market?

    Almost everyone has already mentioned Google and Facebook. I think that also Apple, or at least few of it's products were disrupting ;)
    I would also say that Twitter is an example of a disruptive company. The problem with Twitter which applies to other similar companies is that it is not so profitable as it might looks. Many people use Twitter, mainstream media cite it quite a lot, some twits are really influential. Yet still it struggles to generate a proper profit.

    2. What action should companies take to react to disruptors? What should they do to stay on the market?

    The video from Harvard Business Review suggested that big established companies should extract a separate division to work on disruptive innovations. I think that might be an effective strategy as corporations brings a lot overheads to everything. Other strategy would be to buy out a disruptive competition ;) For instance Google did so with YouTube.

    3. Do you think disruption always comes with innovation?

    I am not sure if always, but usually it does. As Maciej mentioned, changing the way how people use regular thing is also an innovation.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Yes, I agree with you that Twitter is a disruptor. Thanks to Tweeter we have a big popularity of hashtags. Twitter introduced hashtag as a system to tag a subjects on it. Now many celebrates, famous and important people are using Twitter hashtags. It caused that this company became more popular and important even to quote it on media.

    ReplyDelete
  9. 1. Do you know any well-known companies which disrupt the market?

    SpaceX or Tesla (maybe some day)and of course FB and Google, maybe Whatsapp as well.

    2. What action should companies take to react to disruptors? What should they do to stay on the market?

    I think if market prefers the disruptor it means his product or way of selling it is better for people. I think they should adapt to that and fight on even terms.

    3. Do you think disruption always comes with innovation?

    I think so, finding a spot in a market like that is not an easy task. I think more often it comes with the need of change, like AirBnB creators felt the need to change hotel market and they did it.

    ReplyDelete
  10. 1. Do you know any well-known companies which disrupt the market?
    Every applications for banking platform, useful devices with apps for exercising people as well and YouTube with this successors video-sharing website.


    2. What action should companies take to react to disruptors? What should they do to stay on the market?
    The companies should driven by easy access to opinion and facts, which creates something ever closer to consesus. In one of article which I found about keep companies on big-bang disruption they should give a trial version to proof them.


    3. Do you think disruption always comes with innovation?
    In my opinion, disruption in many examples is only fashionable or viral. We've got too much almost identical comunicators, creators tracing etc. without any intelligent and necessary options.

    ReplyDelete
  11. 1. Do you know any well-known companies which disrupt the market?

    Yes I know Uber exactly and how it works. This is great example how to disrupt taxi corporations world.

    2. What action should companies take to react to disruptors? What should they do to stay on the market?

    I think that it is hard to do anything about it. For instance Uber is legal in some countries so there is no way to prevent people from using it. The only way for these companies is to provide clear information that what is wrondg about disruptor - like for instance Uber which does not have any insurance for passengers.

    3. Do you think disruption always comes with innovation?

    Not always. It does not mean that innovation has to come with disruption. Of course it is often true and happens in the real life but there is no one statement about it.

    ReplyDelete
  12. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  13. 1. Do you know any well-known companies which disrupt the market?
    Sure, there are many examples - Alibaba that made buying in China easy, Spotify that made listening to online music legal, Facebook with it's Messenger and WhatsApp that made communication between borders easy and free.
    I would also mention Tesla but not for it's widely known car business, recently they started to make roof tiles with a solar panels that look like regular roof tiles. I think it's real disruption and I believe that this innovation would soon help bring solar energy to the masses.
    2. What action should companies take to react to disruptors? What should they do to stay on the market?
    They should not stay idle. They should prepare strategies to respond to actions performed by disruptive companies. Block strategy which defends existing solutions but stops innovation is unfortunately the most common choice, we can observe that reading about that how Uber is treated in many countries. Better strategy is to copy the disruptor or buy part of it's shares or similar company to compete.
    3. Do you think disruption always comes with innovation?
    I am not sure that it is that strongly connected. Innovation that uses technology and digital media helps propagate the idea but it is not what disruption is all about. Disruptive company that finds business opportunity in offering cheaper products in a specific customer segment does not always need innovation, sometimes it only need some old idea that needs to be polished.

    ReplyDelete
  14. 1. I have one nice example which has not been mentioned in comments above. It’s well know polish brand – empik. It has killed traditional bookstores and other . Somebody had an idea to create a nice please which is filling a lot of shopping needs at the same time. Books, movies, music, computer games, board games, drawing and painting articles. All of them in one place at the same time. Great, isn’t it?

    2. We have to face the truth. If disruptor is gaining a lot of market share it means that the way of fulfilling consumer/customer needs is better than it used to be. If you run company who is facing losses due to disruptor you need to change your operating strategy immediately. Either you copy the new solution but using your size, experience and resources do the same thing in a better way, or you’re able to come up with another disruption and get back market share. But not doing anything will effect only in losses. It’s one of the cases where not moving forward means moving backward.

    3. Obviously not. Let’s take Apple as an example. None of their ideas was innovative. All of them were presented before but for some reasons didn’t succeed. Apple just took them, polished a little bit here and there and… voilà. Global success :)

    ReplyDelete
  15. 1. Do you know any well-known companies which disrupt the market?

    Yes, it might be Google - I remeber it as a simple internet browser, but it become something more. These company is innovative and have so many application like i.e. Google Maps. It works as a navigation, I always use this app when i want to get somewhere.

    Also Apple became o worldwide company which sets standards in an electronic equipment.

    2. What action should companies take to react to disruptors? What should they do to stay on the market?

    I think that this companies should in some scope follow this changes. They cannot stay with their present ideas, becuase they can lose their clients, who can look for other new solutions.

    3. Do you think disruption always comes with innovation?

    Not always. It might be another way of thinking about something. Nowadays products and services need to be simple for customers.

    ReplyDelete
  16. 1. Maybe alibaba which owns aliexpress. There you can order goods from China. Recently I bought the phone 400 PLN cheaper than in Poland (even paying tax). In my opinion it is quite a lot of competition for the Polish retailers :)
    2. It seems to me that it should propose something new. Our taxi could improve the quality of their services. For example by offering the customer a donut or a bottle of water :)
    3. It’s a good question. I’ve never think about it. Certainly it always brings some changes :)

    ReplyDelete
  17. 1. My number one are low-cost airlines, wich are revolutionised budget travels. You can fly to various destinations for a small amount of regular airlines prices.
    2. There are two ways: do exactly as disruptors, a become a opposition challenger; or rise their service quality. Sometimes they need to find their nieche on market.
    3. No, not only innovation. They simply do they job a way better than others. It's enough for calling it "revolutionary".

    ReplyDelete
  18. Not exactly a company, but Wikipedia has been a disruptor on the encyclopedia market.

    Improve, pure and simple. Until they do, they may use any kind of defense strategy, from badmouthing the disruptor to questioning the legality of their business. It's not pretty, but that's business.

    In my view market disruptors are by definition innovators, as the term stems from the concept of disruptive innovations.

    ReplyDelete