Finding your disruptive idea

- You might be watching this course because you have a burning idea that you know could have a huge impact on your company. Maybe you're just looking for a way to frame your idea and build support for you to invest time and research. If this is you, before you bring up your idea to others, you wanna be sure you have a short elevator pitch so you can build support and buy yourself some time and resources to flush out your vision. An elevator pitch is a description of your vision that is simple enough that you could explain it during an elevator ride. You might explain what you want to do, what it could mean for the company, and that first small step you want to take to test your idea. But some of you might not have a disruptive idea. If you love the idea of being disruptive but don't have a specific idea, don't worry. Anyone can be an entrepreneur. You can systematically explore opportunities in your market space by starting with your customers, watching how they use your products and services, and what challenges they still have that your product doesn't yet solve. There's a concept called design thinking that starts with really understanding the customer and then working from there to identify opportunities for disruptive solutions. Check out one of the many design thinking classes in the LinkedIn Learning Library if you wanna dig a little deeper into the concept. Huggies brand pull-up diapers were created using a design thinking approach, starting by watching and talking to parents as they changed diapers in contrast to just focusing on the technical side of the product. As a result of getting close to the customers, they saw the challenges around potty training and ultimately developed an underwear-like diaper that facilitated the transition. If you wanna find a disruptive idea, try talking to your customers, and non-customers, too. Observe how they use or don't use your product. Talk to people who fit into your target market but aren't buying your products too. You'll be surprised at what you learn. Before spending too much time on your idea, you will need to identify the following: a vision of how big your idea could be and what it could do for your organization, and an idea of the first exploration and what your success criteria will be. If there is a huge upside and you have a strong idea of how to test your idea without spending too much money, you might be onto something cool. By the way, if you come up with a great disruptive idea, you don't have to keep it a secret. Lots of founders and entrepreneurs alike have founders anxiety that their idea will be stolen. Not a big issue. First of all, ideas are a dime a dozen. It's the execution that's tough. But more importantly, and especially if you're inside a larger company where you're all on the same team, the more people that are excited about your idea, the more likely you are to get the support and engagement you need to get your plan off the ground. Now is a great time to get started. If you'd like to define or brainstorm your disruptive idea, you should take a moment and do that now.