THE NEXT DISRUPTORS

There’s a great article in this month’s Business 2.0, called The Next Disruptors. It describes 11 companies that have come up with breakthrough innovations that disrupt industries. One of these is Zopa, the peer-to-peer lending exchange that I described to you in February 2006 and which is featured in my new book, “Outside Innovation.”

I haven’t had a chance to research all of the companies and products described in Erik Schonfeld’s and Jeanette Borzo’s article, but it looks to me as if at least half of them fit the “outside innovation” mold. They were either co-designed by lead users and/or the innovations themselves are tools that enable lead customers to innovate. Here are the four that look particularly appropriate as examples of customer-led innovation and platforms for customer-led innovation:

* Netvibes is a do-it-yourself customizable start page creation tool. “The real threat to established portals…comes from the impressive speed and unprecedented drag-and-drop simplicity of the site’s customization tools.”

* Coghead is an end user-friendly application development tool for developing Web applications. (This may be the one I’ve been waiting for!)

* Salesforce.com has made a success of its AppExchange, building a vibrant marketplace for lead user- and consultant-created application extensions to Salesforce.com.

* Zopa the peer-to-peer lending exchange that lets lenders and borrowers bypass banks entirely, yet spreads the risk and yields higher returns.

My hunch is that of the remaining seven companies profiled in the Disruptors article Applied Location, BlueLithium, Clearwire, EEStor, Jajah, NanoLife Sciences, and NextMedium, at least another couple of these were probably co-created with lead users, or stemmed from lead users’ explorations and innovations.

Disrupting an industry is a great barometer for real breakthrough innovation.

Comments

[Alcohol Rehab]

I've seen all these links and I'm truly inspired by these innovations. I like netvibes a lot and I'm glad they are doing something so different and useful.

[Patty Seybold]

Thanks for this comment--and for making me aware of your blog! Always happy to find more folks who are tracking innovative tools and approaches!

Patty

[Innovation Zen]

Notice how most of those companies or technologies offer products or services that are "inferior" to traditional stuff, but they have the potential to improve faster than what mainstream customers demand, hence why they might disrupt traditional businesses in the near future.

Great blog keep it up.

[Rajan Sodhi]

I read this article in Business 2.0 with great interest! In fact, I signed up today on to netvibes.com after reading it and found this blog post through it! I'm officially a netvibes fan and have already started telling all my colleagues.

[Paul McNamara]

Patty, the trouble with packaged CRM applications is that they imposed a canned "customer relationship process" onto their "users". In reality, every company has its own unique way of engaging with its customers. People want applications that help them to work the way they want to work, not the way some software company thinks they should work.

I love your idea. We'll be launching our public beta this month (although I fear we might be a bit over-subscribed for the first few weeks). We will provide a way for our customers to develop applications and share them (if they choose) with the community on whole, or with a group of interested customers. This community can then collaborate to evolve and improve the app. I think your "outside-in CRM" idea would be a great project.

[Patty Seybold]

Russ,
Thanks for the pointer! Babamix looks like a winner to me! A real platform for customer-led innovation.. Looks like you have it all--tools to use to "strut their stuff," tools to use to create derivative works and to mix and match, and the opportunity for customers to compete to win prizes.. I look forward to trying it out!

Patty

[Patty Seybold]

Hey Paul,
I can't wait to get my hands on Coghead.. I have a personal favorite app I'd like to have a platform for:

A Customer Portal that enables customers to manage their relationships with us--rather than vice versa.. All CRM systems and salesforce management apps are designed from the inside out--to manage our customer relationships and pipelines. I want a tool that lets me (a biz person, not a geek) easily develop, and lets my customers evolve, their own preferred views of their relationships with us--projects we are doing together, products they've bought, questions they have for us or for other customers--account and payment status.. essentially an outside in customer view -- What I'm looking for might be thought of as a poor man's customer portal, but it needs to be really easy to develop/deploy and should be customer- as well as business end-user modifiable... How long before I'll be able to do that with Coghead???

Patty

[Russ]

Once again, great article. If I may make a suggestion, aother potential disrupter you might want to keep an eye on is babamix.com.

[Paul McNamara, CEO Coghead]

Hi Patty, thanks for your nice mention of Coghead. We're big believers in your work. Coghead is all about letting the people closest to a situation create the solution. Today, solutions to information technology needs are provided (nearly exclusively) by people who tend to be far removed from 'the coalface'. We want to enable innovation by the people who live and breathe the actual business need. We don't want to exclude IT from the solution, rather we want to give customers more of a role in the innovation process.