In today’s society, where competition is at its absolute peak, we, business school students, thirsty and eager for success, could not be in more doubt to reach the ultimate goal of establishing our own company one day. In a world where there are a handful of powerful companies which dominate one industry or market, and in an environment where firms have secured a position high up in the ladder in consumers’ mind for different goods and services, the light at the end of the tunnel looks bleak and dim for startup companies looking to make it big.

As the saying goes, an idea by itself is all you need. A worldly famous example of this being Facebook when it overpowered all other social media outlets when it shot from the ground. But in a world where new ideas, both great and terrible, seem to be sprouting everywhere, is a single idea enough? As Arnold H. Glasow once so cleverly wrote, “an idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied”.

So the question which then arises is, what is the right action to take? The answer? Disruptive innovation. A leading example which precisely illustrates this concept is Bench, a tech startup providing accounting services to small businesses via live bookkeepers online. Bench’s vision from day 1 was disruptive innovation: starting at the bottom of a market which has always been known to be exclusively available to sophisticated firms willing to pay a large fee. In this case, starting bottom did not necessarily mean starting from a lower or disadvantaged position, but meant starting at a position where it was easier to capture the group of small to medium-sized firms who needed bookkeeping services to run efficiently but who were unable to afford employing renown accounting services. An innovative idea (online bookkeeping services) coupled with targeting the niche group of consumers who were neglected by the dominant players in the market has made Bench the leading example of a startup that it is today.

SOURCE:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-money/business-funding/frustrated-with-lack-of-venture-capital-in-canada-startup-moves-south/article16522672/#dashboard/follows/

WORKS CITED:

Christensen, C. (2012). Disruptive Innovation. [online] Clayton Christensen. Available at: http://www.claytonchristensen.com/key-concepts/ [Accessed 2 Nov. 2014].

The Founder Institute, (2014). FI.co: Startup Misconceptions: All You Need is a Good Idea. [online] Available at: http://fi.co/posts/8011 [Accessed 2 Nov. 2014].