Filed under: brainstorming corner — @ 12:22 pm

A disruptive technology is a new technological innovation, product, or service that eventually overturns the existing dominant technology in the market, despite the fact that the disruptive technology is both radically different from the leading technology and that it often initially performs worse than the leading technology according to existing measures of performance. A disruptive technology comes to dominate an existing market by either filling a role in a new market that the older technology could not fill or by successively moving up-market through performance improvements until finally displacing the market incumbents (wikipedia).

Entrepreneurs need to be disruptive in their ways of doing things. They must seek to breakthrough the monotony of all of the "established” businesses out there in the market and turn them upside down with something so radical and crazy that must be recognized. Now this is easier said than done, of course, but if we begin to train our minds to think on a radical level about our businesses, then there are no limits to what we can do.

Being young entrepreneurs gives us the benefit of having fresh, energetic, and sharp minds. We like to rebel and do things our own ways in life - that's what makes us such a powerful force and we need to use that same rebellious energy to implement ideas that jump into the market and shake things up.

Companies such as Microsoft, ebay, craigslist, and Google are all well established in the market and dominate certain niches of their own, but that doesn't mean that another entrepreneur can't come along one day and throw a curve ball at these big players with something so unique and something so crazy, that people are forced to take notice and give it a shot.

Please don't ever underestimate what you're capable of doing as a young entrepreneur. If you're working on a business, working on plans and ideas, implementing ideas, and constantly brainstorming, then consider yourself one of the deadliest weapons in business because you're like a time bomb waiting to explode with an idea or service that has the potential to breakthrough ANY business.

I'm not saying that it sh

ould be your plan to go toe to toe or head to head with well established businesses; actually, you shouldn't at all. What you should do is go AROUND them by creating something that disturbs them in some way. Something that allows you to go left when they're going right.

The main reason most student entrepreneurs fall into the trap of just starting typical businesses without any originality, is because they fear that their ideas aren't strong enough to compete with what's already out there.

Well you can't think that way. You really have to believe and convince yourself that what you're doing as an entrepreneur can really standout among the thousands of other companies out there. What makes these are entrepreneurs better that you? NOTHING.

Yes, they've created things that are great so they deserve credit. But you have a mind as well and have the potential to create something even better, something that can throw a wrench in the workings of other businesses simply because the idea is so fresh and goes counter to everything people knew and depended on for so many years.

Look at the digital camera, it disrupted the entire camera film industry. Look at craigslist, it disrupted the entire auction industry (re: ebay). And Google shook up the search industry with their concentration on search engines when so many other companies were spreading themselves thin working on everything under the sun.

When you see businesses swimming downstream, you need to start swimming upstream. You have to consciously do things that combine, add, subtract, and divide from other pre-existing business models. Shake things up. Be crazy. Never be normal.

Life is too short to focus you business on something generic. You have to do things that carry that shock/wow factor; things that slap the market in the face with their radical and unique approaches.

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