Based on six years of research, Harvard Business School professor Thales Teixeira shows how and why industries are disrupted, and what established companies can do to respond — as well as what potential startups must master if they hope to gain a competitive edge.
As it turns out, there is a pattern to disruption in an industry, whether the disruptor is Uber, Airbnb or a dozen other startups that have shaken up incumbents and threatened the status quo.
For disruptors to pose a threat to an industry, they have to successfully break the link in choosing, purchasing or consuming a product or service. Upstarts, Teixeria shows, do not attempt to compete with or overtake a reigning incumbent company entirely. Instead, they work to peel away a portion of the consumer decision-making process, the way Birchbox offered women a new way to sample new beauty products from a variety of cosmetics and fragrance companies, without having to go to the Revlon or Estee Lauder...