This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Part II: The Solution, and the Pitch
Chapter 4—Shaping a Disruptive Solution: Novelty for Novelty’s Sake Is a Resource Killer
Disruptive ideas are great, but they’re only half the story. Unless you can make those ideas feasible, they can’t deliver value. How do you know whether an idea is workable? Well, you don’t, unless you actually see how it plays with your target market. Without testing your ideas with prospective end users and consumers, you’re in danger of coming up with really terrific ideas that will completely flop when they hit store shelves. In this chapter, we change our focus from conceiving ideas to transforming them into practical solutions. Remember: There’s a simple but critical difference between an idea and a solution: A solution is always feasible. If it’s not, it’s not really a solution.
Chapter 5—Making a Disruptive Pitch: Under Prepare the Obvious, Over Prepare the Unusual
At this point, you’ve got a bit of a sales job on your hands. No, I’m not talking about selling to customers. Long before you get to that point, you’ll need to sell your disruptive solution to the people within your organization or the external stakeholders who control the purse strings. So, be prepared: Most people don’t embrace a disruptive solution because it’s disruptive; they embrace it because they believe it will deliver value. And you’re going to need a lot more than a basic presentation to earn that confidence. That’s why the final output of this process is a 9-minute pitch that takes your audience from their initial, pre-presentation, “Why should I care about this?” through the mid-presentation, “I’m curious to see where this is going.” attitude, to a post-presentation, “Hey, this is great! How do we implement it?”