Disrupt: Think the Unthinkable to Spark Transformation in Your Business

by Luke Williams

In a business world of nonstop change, there's only one way to win the  Transform it entirely. This requires a revolution in thinking--a steady stream of disruptive strategies and unexpected solutions. In  Disrupt , Luke Williams shows exactly how to generate those strategies and deliver those solutions.
 
This book reflects Williams' immense experience creating breakthrough solutions at frog design, one of the world's leading innovation firms. Williams shows how to combine fluid creativity with analytical rigor in a simple, complete, five-stage process for successfully disrupting any market.
 
You'll learn why the most unexpected ideas draw the least competitors--and offer the greatest potential. Then, using many examples and a case study, you'll walk through every step of transforming disruptive ideas from conception to breakthrough business strategy.
 
Craft your disruptive hypothesis
Be wrong at the start, to be right at the end
 
Discover your best disruptive opportunities
Explore the most unexpected corners of your environment
 
Efficiently shape your disruptive solution
Avoid the resource-killer that is "novelty for novelty's sake"
 
Make your winning disruptive pitch
Under prepare the obvious, over prepare the unusual
REVIEWS "Remember the old Apple tagline, urging us all to 'Think Different?' In this book, Luke Williams shows us how to do precisely that.  Disrupt  helps you look at business--and the world around you--through a fresh lens, one that turns assumptions and convention upside down. Best of all, this is a practical book for the real world--Williams reveals not just how to come up with disruptive ideas, but how to nurture them, test them, pitch them, and ultimately make them real and profitable."
- Warren Berger, author of  Glimmer

"By artfully smashing ideas together--from Schumpeter to Tarantino, business to design--Luke Williams upends the ordinary, providing the reader with a motivational and pragmatic blueprint for innovative thinking."
- Jamyn Edis, Vice-President of Emerging Technology R&D at HBO

"At some time, someone somewhere is going to disrupt your entire industry. Shouldn't it be you? In this easy-to-follow step-by-step guide, Luke Williams reveals a way of thinking that has the power to transform your business. Read this book before your competitors do."
- Cordell Ratzlaff, Director of User-Centered Design, Cisco

"For those companies second guessing their future paths, ponder no longer. Disrupt provides that path, and it may be your real only strategy in today's climate." 
- Andy Stefanovich, Chief Curator and Provocateur, Prophet

"I've observed Luke's process of disruptive thinking generate remarkably innovative solutions. I hope that many more companies will disrupt their existing innovation processes to benefit as well. They'll be glad they did!" 
- Peter N. Golder, Professor of Marketing, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth 

"Luke Williams is the master at unleashing big thoughts. His book,  Disrupt , shows us how to do what sometimes seems impossible--conceiving and executing bold ideas with massive potential. At the Nike Foundation, we've put Luke's principles to work and had tremendous results." 
- Stuart Hogue, Director, Systems at Scale, Nike Foundation

Genres: Business, Design, Nonfiction, Leadership, Amazon, Management, Entrepreneurship

198 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2010

About the author

LUKE WILLIAMS is a leading business thinker, speaker and author having lectured in 21 countries & addressed the World Innovation Forum & the United Nations General Assembly. He is Professor of Innovation at NYU Stern School of Business and the founder of Idea Skills™.

Williams is the inventor of 30+ U.S. patents & has designed more than 100 products in industries ranging from transportation to finance, and healthcare to consumer electronics.

His views are regularly featured in media ranging from Bloomberg BusinessWeek & Fast Company to The Wall Street Journal & The Economist. He is the author of the international bestseller, Disrupt: Think the Unthinkable to Spark Transformation in Your Business.

Reviews

[Nick]

A clever book written by the head of a clever design company that argues for overturning your industry by asking what the opposite is of every idea you take for granted. Like socks, for example. Why just pairs of socks, endlessly? Why not 3 in a pack, so you always have 2, and all three different (but coordinated) so that you don’t have to worry about mis-matched socks. A brilliant idea, and a company, Little MisMatched, that is an extraordinary success.

[Chris McDonnell]

Most memorable quote
"[There is a] surplus of similar companies, employing similar people, with similar educational backgrounds, coming up with similar ideas, producing similar things, with similar prices and similar quality."

Tweet review
The step-by-step recipe book for cooking up ways to upend mundane businesses in ways that are meaningful to the user

Full review
Don't let my three star review fool you; Disrupt is an important read. I chose to rate it with three starts because the book is just as much a formula as it is a text. The most important part of this book is their four step formula to disrupting mundane, overlooked, unseen, unchallenged business practices. I don't think an entire text was needed to convey this formula.

Now that I've got that clarification out of the way, let me count the ways I liked Disrupt. The book takes a lean stance on product design (and business more generally), which I find immensely valuable. It focuses on testing and reviewing iteratively, with prototypes that invite conversations, arguments, and collaborations.

I liked its research approach as well. It focuses on both seeing problems as customers see them, and also seeing problems as customers unknowingly see them. That's to say, they take a lean ethnographic approach to research to see how customers consciously see problems, and also to reveal customers' tension points (those problems that are so mundane and industry-wide that everyone overlooks them).

[Becky]

Spent some time perusing and flipping through for ideas for a presentation. Will be a good reference in the future.

[Florence]

Brilliant book on how to create innovative products & services, complete with step-by-step instructions. It's like your own manual on conducting a innovation workshop. Recommended for anyone who is looking for new ways to shake up their business.

[Richard Bravman]

I'm a fan of "design thinking" (Apple's secret sauce). I also believe that ANY industry can be disrupted, and probably will. Better to be the disrupter than the disruptee. This book, by Frog Design's CEO, provides insight into how... Recommended, with enthusiasm.

[Diana-Michaela Shaffner]

Even in our times where everything seems to be changing rapidly and constantly, there are still great opportunities for even bigger and better change. That change can be delivered not by improvement of what's already there but by total disruption. The author walks a reader through the stages of developing a disruptive idea and then executing on this idea. The individual steps seem a bit drawn out and overly lengthy. However, the main premise of the book which is to embrace the idea of being the disrupter rather than the disrupted is an important one. In the end somebody will disrupt your current industry and unless you are the disruptor, you will be one of the many frantically trying to catch up and rebalance.

[Serge Larose]

The timing was right, since I was working on a project that would disrupt the world of travelling, however I felt there was a lot more potential in this book. If felt a little flat, the small things I retained from the author were, write everything down - all of your ideas and brainstorming, because once it's written you can see it and make better sense of it. There weren't many supporting examples to enhance his points.

[Nag Jayaraman]

Gives good view in importance of disruptive ideas and a process for generating and passing through those ideas. For a book I expect lot more content than what got covered there. Some of the examples are outdated too.

[Antonio Vernacchio]

Starts off slow and very basic. Finishes with good advice on a 9 minute pitch for your disruptive idea. Will use the 9 minute pitch in the future to disrupt the way we think about how we do work.

[Fatima Wiamer]

good if you are trying to start a company that sells a product. not good if it's a service business..

[Alvaro]

Enjoyable recipe for a different innovation method. It’s going to be a great reference for an attractive presentation structure.

[Terri]

"So, how do you go about making disruptive thinking part of your skill set? Well, it's not about hiring the right people or spending more money on training or traditional approaches to innovation. The good new is that schools around the world are already teaching disruptive thinking to their students. The bad news is that , instead of being taught in MBA programs, this new thinking style is taught in design schools."

Those are the people currently being taught to think "disruptively." This book is about that- providing a framework to find and implement new ideas for the right reasons. And then how do you make that happen? Companies are generally most comfortable with the status quo, disruptive leaders are able to see what a company is capable of becoming with new ideas and changes.

It's fairly easy to think of small changes- a new color for a logo, switching up the work hours but disruptive hypothesis are ones that go well beyond the sort of obvious changes. For example, "what would happen if we didn't charge late fees for movie returns?" Netflix.

Luke Williams and his think tank ideas are here for the mere cost of a book.

[Ninakix]

I skimmed through this book and have to say it's the only book that I've seen that actually captures a design process well for the layman reader. Too many design books are aimed at other designers, or at describing the design process for nondesigners (but not in enough detail that these people could actually perform a design process). That really helps with the mystique designers seem to have created for themselves, but isn't helpful in leu of the lack of design talent in certain industries. With that in mind, I'd recommend this as a companion to nondesigners who are forced to do their own design, though nothing is better than having an experienced, thoughtful designer.

[Matthew Hodge]

I really like the concept here - about having a disruptive idea that you can break into the market with. So not just a better version of what you already do but a totally new idea to cut through.

However, because Luke Williams is writing from the perspective of a designer rather than a marketer, I sometimes found some of his examples and ideas to be less feasible than others. (Perhaps in my industry.)

Still, great framework for thinking about disruptive ideas and worth reading for a great chapter on how to present a 9 minute presentation on a new idea to senior management.

Well, worth a look, especially if you are in a work area where you have wild ideas and want to see them implemented.

[Leader Summaries]

Desde Leader Summaries recomendamos la lectura del libro Ideas disruptivas, de Luke Williams.
Las personas interesadas en las siguientes temáticas lo encontrarán práctico y útil: innovación, técnicas de creatividad, innovación, desarrollo y cambio.
En el siguiente enlace tienes el resumen del libro Ideas disruptivas, Cómo pensar lo impensable y sorprender al mercado con productos poco convencionales: Ideas disruptivas

[Jose Papo]

Very good book to help you have good disruptive ideas. Gives a structured process to think big and different. I also liked it because it´s not isolated from the customers. One of the steps in the process is to observe and use ethnographic tools to understand the customer hidden needs and see if your disruptive ideass could really make sense. Overall a nice and small book about disruptive thinking and how to apply it in your business.

[Eugene Leventhal]

i thought this was a very good read. i had the pleasure of sitting through a lecture that Luke Williams gave, and if you read the book with his jovial personality and aussie accent in mind, it makes even more of a great read. the methodology he describes is and important one for anyone interested in creating new ideas/businesses. short, quick read that offers an overview at the end that can serve as a great guide once you've read the book. highly recommend it

[Alan Kercinik]

Must read for anyone in the idea business. Some interesting thoughts and strategies to turning your ideas upside down. I hate creativity just for creativity's sake. (Like when George Lucas uses CGI for no other reason than to show off he can.) This book is about finding good, viable solutions to vexing problems. Great examples throughout.

[Prateek Vasisht]

Craft your disruptive hypothesis Be wrong at the start, to be right at the end Discover your best disruptive opportunities Explore the most unexpected corners of your environment Efficiently shape your disruptive solution Avoid the resource-killer that is "novelty for novelty's sake" Make your winning disruptive pitch Under prepare the obvious, over prepare the unusual

[Dave Gerhart]

I enjoyed this book a lot. If you are looking to grow and disrupt the norm, I would recommend this book. I read it through without having an idea of what I was going to develop. I will have to read it again when I want to disrupt and tackle a new project.

[Lihsian]

http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story...

[Anetq]

Manual for developing, prototyping, testing, presenting and selling your disruptive idea... Took me ages to get through this (only stubbornness got me through).

[Jeffrey Plummer]

Meh...

[Travisimo Baldwin]

Covers inspirational case studies and good principals for stimulating disruption with clients.

[Camilo]

Inspiring Book! Lots of ideas, and definitely one I want to keep around

[Don Keeting]

It is a manual for learning how to think creatively.

[Anastasia]

Such an inspirational speaker and a very detailed how to book on how to think disruptively and how to create new industries.

[Ishé Reyes]

Great case studies and very easy to start nailing the new way to think our modern lives require. Interesting.

[Kelly]

A quick read, and an interesting one. Mostly I enjoyed it for the examples of start-ups -- how each of them 'disrupted' the market in innovative ways.

[Miguel Bulgàr]

- to be continued-