Disruption-Oriented Product Planning: Towards a Framework for a Planning Process for Disruptive Products

Established companies are unmatched in developing sustaining innovations, but when it comes to disruptive products, new entrants often outperform them. Despite the implementation of ‘agile methods’ to enable shorter development cycles and continuous customer feedback, the success score of most corporates still lacks market-changing innovations. Disruption is a continuous process that should start with niche products focusing on insufficiently addressed customer needs and — given a positive market feedback — continue with new variants to gain market share step-by-step. Hence, a needs-oriented definition of the initial product offer followed by a need-based planning of future product variants are essential for a disruptive product strategy. Yet, companies' failure rates of ∼40% for new products show that the need-based definition of minimum viable products and the planning of later product generations is insufficient. In this paper, the authors present a framework for a disruption-oriented product planning process. Based on a literature analysis focused on methodologies supporting the development process of potentially disruptive innovations, basic criteria are derived and deficits of existing approaches are identified. The framework will help companies as a guideline to understand the overall process of how to develop disruptive innovations. It further explains the essential activities and their interactions.