What direction should a company take in the face of disruption ?

John Chambers said it in his article – Disruption is going to happen. That is a fact. How you react to it makes or breaks your company. Every sector has a disruption coming along around the corner. And I believe there are always signs. Whether its technology, oil & gas (How could we have not seen that coming?) or agriculture – every industry will have its own signs leading upto the “overnight” change in the market. Its upto the companies functioning in those environments to identify the ever present signs.

Your Customers will tell you everything!

As a company, one of the most important components are the customers. The company exists to match the needs of these customers. And more often than not, these customers will tell the company which direction to take.

Similar to a new start-up that is trying to solve an issue that its potential customers have or trying to fix the needs of its potential customers, a company’s existing customers will also signal at their needs and requirements from the products.

Some start-ups have the concept of having an entrepreneur in residence. It took me quite a while at my workplace to exactly understand what work such a position entails. But turns out, the profile is an integral part of the company’s success. This this employee’s job to not only manage the innovative culture in the workspace but also keep a steady eye out for any forms of disruptions in the market. The job entails meeting with potential customers or partners to get a sense of what direction the market is heading in order to align the company on that track.

Time is of the essence

This is an area I have mixed reviews on.

I have read articles which talk about knowing everything there is to know about the change you plan to make. This, they claim, is a fool proof way to not remake the mistakes that have been made before. After all, we don’t have to make all mistakes ourselves to learn from them, do we?

But yet another school of thought talks about innovating and iterating on every decently good proposition. It is believed that the affected change will lead to success multiple iterations and feedbacks. In this way, you get to be ahead of the market and get your customers accustomed to the changes even before you have a complete, finished product to present.

Although, both these strategies might have worked for companies in the past, I, personally, feel there are flaws in both these methodologies. While you run the risk of losing out on time and getting to your customers in time in the first one, in the second option you run a high risk of callousness and impacting your reputation in case the product goes drastically bad.

How does a company choose which trajectory to take? How do they find a fool proof way to ensure success not only in the short run but for years to come? Would love to discuss more on this in class!