The secrets for disruptive business success

Guest post by Sally Percy is the author of new book The Disruptors: How 15 Successful Businesses Defied the Norm, published by Kogan Page on 03 September. We will shortly be reviewing this book too.

What’s the secret to disruptive business success? Well, there’s no denying that an ultra-powerful algorithm certainly helps.

Take social media giant, TikTok, for example. It became a global phenomenon on the back of its powerful recommendation algorithm, which learns users’ interests from their viewing habits and makes compelling, personalized recommendations that keep them hooked.

The Disruptors, achieving disruptive business success

Another disruptive business that has capitalized on algorithms is music streaming platform Spotify. Its highly effective algorithms analyse the listening habits of hundreds of millions of users, make connections based on historical listening behaviour, and then predict what individual listeners will want to hear in future. As a result, it delivers a highly personalized experience that listeners love.

TikTok and Spotify are two of the groundbreaking businesses that I studied for my book, The Disruptors: How 15 Successful Businesses Defied the Norm. Along with the other businesses I researched, they can teach powerful lessons on achieving disruptive success.

While investment in state-of-the-art technology is a common characteristic of disruptors, they also embrace these three critical strategies:

Do what other businesses don’t dare to do

It’s a risk to try to turn your product’s greatest weakness into its greatest strength. But that’s what casual footwear brand Crocs did with its foam-based shoes. Even Crocs’ own inventors thought they were ugly. But would-be customers were willing to overlook the shoes’ unusual appearance because of their sheer practicality and comfortable fit. So, the brand turned the unattractiveness of the shoes into a marketing advantage, using the strapline ‘Ugly Can Be Beautiful’ in an advertising campaign.

Crocs has successfully established itself as a “love or hate” brand, which has enabled it to generate a huge amount of traction in the fashion marketplace and earn the enduring loyalty of consumers. Thanks to their iconic design, Crocs are instantly recognisable – even if they are not to everyone’s taste.

Execute a concept better than anyone else

Home-sharing platform Airbnb was not the first website in the US to enable people to book short-term accommodation. But who needs to be the first mover when you can execute the concept better than anyone else?

Two out of Airbnb’s three co-founders, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, come from a design background. This helped enormously when it came to building the company’s distinctive brand, which is grounded in the concept of community. The third co-founder, Nathan Blecharczyk, studied computer science at Harvard and, from the outset, made clever use of technology to help Airbnb gain a competitive edge.

By developing a better product and a more distinctive brand, Airbnb has overtaken its rivals. In fact, the concept of staying in Airbnb accommodation has become so well known that ‘Airbnb’ is even used as a verb by people looking to rent space.

Tackle big problems

Disruptive businesses like to tackle big problems – and problems don’t get much bigger than climate change. Electric car maker Tesla is tackling this challenge head-on, through its self-proclaimed mission to build a world “powered by solar energy, running on batteries and transported by electric vehicles”.

Climate change isn’t the only problem that Tesla is trying to address, however. It is also trying to make car travel safer through automation, reducing the number of deaths in road traffic accidents. Specifically, Tesla has plans to launch the so-called ‘robotaxi’, an autonomous car that is able to drive itself completely without human intervention.

What makes a disruptor?

While disruptive businesses will inevitably share some similarities, the business model of no two disruptors is ever identical. Every disruptor will have its own ideas, products, mission and strategy. These factors – combined a willingness to exploit technology – are also essential ingredients for success.

Sally Percy is the author of new book The Disruptors: How 15 Successful Businesses Defied the Norm, published by Kogan Page on 03 September.

Sally Percy is a business journalist and editor, specialising in leadership and management. She is also a leadership contributor to Forbes.com and a commercial copywriter, speechwriter and ghostwriter. She is author of The Disruptors: How 15 Successful Businesses Defied the Norm (Kogan Page), 21st Century Business Icons: The Leaders Who Are Changing our World (Kogan Page) and Reach the Top in Finance: The Ambitious Accountant’s Guide to Career Success (Bloomsbury).

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