What does disruption really mean? We asked the disruptors
Disruption is one of the buzzwords that gets used ad nauseam these days.
All startups hope they’ll be the ones to shake up their industry, but true disruption is hard to find.
We know that all too well having set ourselves the challenge of identifying 100 brands that can be defined as innovators in their field.
Along with Marketing Week and Salesforce, we scoured the globe looking for exciting companies that offer something different.
Having tracked them down and produced a rather lovely Top 100 Disruptors 2016 report, we’ve asked a few of the founders for their opinions on what it means to be disruptive.
In this video you can hear from the following people:
- James Kirkham, chief strategy officer at Copa90
- Stephen Rapoport, founder of Pact
- Kirsty Emery, co-founder of Unmade
- Justin Basini, co-founder and CEO of ClearScore
- Andy Hobsbawm, co-founder and CMO of EVRYTHNG
- Erin Ozagir, founder and CEO of Push Doctor
- Emma Chalwin, marketing leader UKI at Salesforce
And I’ve also summarised a few choice quotes below, but you’ll have to watch the video to hear from them all.
What does it mean to be disruptive?
James Kirkham, chief strategy officer at Copa90
"Crucially it means you then set the agenda that other people try to mimic or copy or follow suit.
"Disruption isn’t just doing things in a different way that then doesn’t resonate, or go any further, or becomes a one-off, because that’s more of a gimmick.
"It provides entirely new challenges of course, because to be continually disruptive you need to continually stay ahead of that chasing pack, but that’s also the exciting reason people like us are involved in a business like this."
Kirsty Emery, co-founder of Unmade
"Being disruptive means looking at a problem with a new perspective and finding a different solution through that new perspective.
"So the way we do that here at Unmade is by having a team full of lots of people from lots of different backgrounds.
"So although we’re solving a problem within the knitting industry we have people who are engineers, physicists, fashion designers, and also other creatives all working together."
Andy Hobsbawm, co-founder and CMO of EVRYTHNG
"The idea originally of disruption was that there are unmet market needs that incumbents can’t address because they’ve grown so broad in their approach to the market that they’re missing those fundamental pockets of needs.
"Then a new entrant comes, identifies that specific thing that they want to serve, and they do that more effectively, with more focus, better, cheaper and so on."
Emma Chalwin, marketing leader UKI at Salesforce
"I think to be a disruptor in today’s ever-evolving world you really need to not be afraid to take a risk.
"Some of the best innovators and disruptors in the world have just had that passion, tenacity and vision, and have never deviated away from the true core of their business.
"They’ve seen an area in the market that needs to change, or the customer experience needs to change.
"Brands such as Airbnb and Uber I think are perfect examples of where an industry has changed, someone has come in and disrupted and completely turned that industry on its head.
"17 years ago Salesforce disrupted the software market by wanting to make enterprise software as easy and simple as buying a book on Amazon."
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