Unlocking the Customer Value Chain: How Decoupling Drives Consumer Disruption

by Thales S. Teixeira

In looking to the Big Seven in order to spot new waves of disruption, companies should bear in mind one particular tenet of decoupling theory: attending to the demand side (i.e., studying customer behaviors and underlying motivations) rather than the supply side (i.e., studying companies and their offerings). The rising desire for SIAFI represents a growing wave of consumer behavior, and as I have suggested, businesses have responded to it with distinct and specialized products and services, including subscriptions, product-as-a-service (PaaS), and playlists (in the case of content). It’s not the rise of subscriptions, say, that is disruptive—this is merely one type of response. The underlying driver is customers’ emerging need to secure providers and provisions up front, thereby incurring a setup cost, so as to receive a constant flow of value in the foreseeable future.