The one sentence summary

Compete on all fronts at the same time, market to everyone immediately, and constantly recombine the efforts of low cost experiments to create improved products.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

  • It used to take years for new products and services to dethrone industry leaders. Now any business can be instantly devastated by something better and cheaper.
  • Start-ups can unravel your strategy before you even begin to grasp what’s happening, and they may not even see you as competition – you could simply be collateral damage.
  • The authors are part of the Accenture Institute for High Performance, and map out a process by which you can take control of your company’s future.
  • Big Bang Disruption happens when undisciplined strategy, unconstrained growth and unencumbered development all come together. They are now all possible because of the declining costs of creation, information, and experimentation.
  • Conventional wisdom suggests you focus on just one discipline, target a small group of early adopters, and eventually innovate to meet the needs of underserved segments. Big Bang Wisdom competes on all fronts at the same time, markets to everyone immediately, and constantly recombines the efforts of low cost experiments to create improved products.
  • The old Rogers bell curve of innovators, early adopters, early & late majority, and laggards is now out of date. It has been replaced by a steep shark’s fin of trial users and everyone else. This has four components:

1. The singularity – an early and long flat phase punctuated by a few market experiments

2. The Big Bang – in which a new product or service totally disrupts the old order, very fast

3. The Big Crunch – the disruptor enters a mature state, and things unravel

4. Entropy – the last phase of a dying industry (the last elements may recombine to generate the next singularity)

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

  • The authors map out 12 rules to cope with all this – three per stage:

1. Consult your truth tellers.

2. Pinpoint market entry.

3. Launch seemingly random experiments.

4. Survive catastrophic success (when something takes off ‘unexpectedly’).

5. Capture winner-takes-all markets.

6. Create bullet time (the slowed down bullet dodging phenomenon in The Matrix).

7. Anticipate saturation.

8. Shed assets before they become liabilities.

9. Quit while you’re ahead.

10. Escape your own black hole.

11. Become someone else’s components.

12. Move to a new singularity.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

  • Not much. The creation of the universe metaphor is perhaps a little overplayed.