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.