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Kathy Sierra Reveals the Formula for Disruptive Innovation

kidmercury | 30 November, 2005 14:08

Well, she calls it "how to come up with breakthrough ideas," but to use the parlance of this blog, it's the same as how to come up with disruptive innovations. In what is one of the best blog posts I've read in a while (here, read it), she begins by acknowledging perhaps the most fundamental point of disruptive innovation:

The big point is this: trying to compete with existing products, services, or ideas by tuning the SAME set of sliders everyone else uses is a painful path. The breathrough ideas usually come from adding new sliders! There are exceptions, though -- if you tune an existing slider in a dramatic or counterintuitive way, you might end up with a breakthrough edge, at least temporarily.

Here, though, is the golden excerpt. Her rules for coming up with breakthrough ideas:

1) Borrow sliders [sliders = innovations] from an entirely different product or service type.

2) Look at the conventional wisdom--things everybody offering that product or service takes for granted--and see if you can tune a slider the others consider immutable (or unimportant).

3) Randomly add sliders and play what-if brainstorming games.

4) Ask users to come up with sliders. This is more effective (and similar to #3) if you ask users from a different domain!

So there you have it, the formula to break in and conquer. Now all you have to do is execute it. :)


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