What Disruption Means?

So before the COVID-19 every single company out there was seeking to be digital and to transform the way they operate and improve the products. Right now I'm sure lots of companies regret their investments in the past however several companies dont have money to invest and improve things right now and thats fine. I'm and I always was a big fan of new technologies, new languages, new servers, new approaches to problems. However, new shiny things have issues and drawbacks and sometimes take time to figure them out, look microservices for instance. However we tend to think we always can innovate, we always can do new things. But before we jump to new things, are we doing the old things right? Are we sure there is space for more innovation? So basically we can see innovation as a gold rush, there some much gold you can mine. That thought I was blogging about 6 years ago. There are lots of technology floating us with several applicability issues Blockchain for instance. 

Continuous Discovery & Low Hanging Fruits

Understand your consumers is not enough. You definitely understood your consumers at least ONCE otherwise you would not have a business. But are you still understanding your consumers? Are you just looking how to do disruptive break trought with new stuff or are you looking to your OLD stuff and make it work better? That's why I like DTA/TTA approaches because we need that *continuous discovery* property because the world does not stop changing. I would say thanks to the COVID-19 the world change a lot. I'm not in favor of the disease and economical crises we are right now, don't get me wrong. However, I would argue most of the business new to re-invent their selves right now. I dont mean necessarily the low hanging fruits like:

* Industry/Transport/Payments: Low Touch solutions

* Service Vendors(Tech): Remote First Services

* e-commerce/retail/tourism: AR/VR to improve the remote experience

* Gaming/Entertaining: Streaming (Content might be an issue soon) 

If your company is in one of that business definitely thats something you can look for. However if your company already digital it might be a bit hard since you might not have low handing fruits without a governing influence. It's funny but right now lots of business could only do better with the end of the COVID-19 and/or with Gov influence. Liberals don't governmental influence, I dont mean this is a political thing but as an unfortunate reality. 

Core Business vs New Business

But what about your business? It's your business working right now? Sure you could look for new markets and in ways to make your business work considering the "new reality". It makes sense to look to new business opportunities but also we can improve the core business. In order to require the core-business right now, it requires lots of EXPERIMENTATION and massive CUSTOMER obsession(The Amazon Motto).  So is the solution to keep following an old plan for an old-world pre-COVID-19? Would make sense to just throw some sexy new tech without understanding the IMPACT and benefit to the business? We often are familiar with the idea of disruptive innovation and be our own future competitor(Another amazon idea here) however I would say continue operating is a huge challenge anyway. Looks like most of the companies are big baking on "Hope" and I really hope the COVID-19 next year, but what if it does not ends? What ifs there is another global black swan event? I would if we dont have change in our DNA lots of companies will start following down. 

If the core business does not work is very likely the company will have serious trouble. So as much as it looks hard that might need to happen. The question is would the "changes" or "investments" have real impact or not? Again it looks like to me continuous experimentations are more important than ever in order to reduce Risk and double down on actions to improve the current business. 

Accepting Uncertain

Before the COVID-19 this was clear to me, now it's even more clear. Nobody was expecting a black swan event like we are facing right now. Right now I would say disruption was a different meaning, there are lots of things we can't do it right now. I would say that right now disruption means understanding the new reality and find ways to the business keep operating and even growing if possible. Wich might be very hard. So if improving is hard we could also take the lean route and make sure we do less WASTE, which might be also efficient and crucial right now. I have no idea how the world will look in 2021 and 2022. But I'm sure will be different, how fast and can learn, adapt, and change is not literal anymore, it's for real. 

Cheers,

Diego Pacheco


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