Few words have changed their meaning as dramatically as "disruption". Not long ago, the connotations were almost entirely negative: few parents would have wanted their children to be described as "disruptive". In today's business world, it's a two-edged sword: you either aspire to be a disruptor or you fear that that you will wake up one morning to find that someone has successfully disrupted your business model. To avoid this disaster, you may even spend your time trying to disrupt yourself before others get there first.
However you do it, disruption is about gaining competitive advantage through differentiation and innovation. It is perhaps strange that businesses spend so much time on adopting best practice which, by definition, isn't new. Of course, it makes sense to understand how competitors deliver their products or services more quickly or more cheaply. But best practice and benchmarking look backwards towards others' past achievements rather than looking forward to what we can do distinctively. Following a linear route through a set of checklists can't deliver something radically different. Efficiency isn't the same as effectiveness. How can you possibly disrupt by following the market?
You might respond by arguing that bespoke strategy is expensive and is only realistic for premium segments of the market. Or that mass market personalisation – such the T-shirt bearing your photograph - is feasible today, but only as a function of digital technologies or 3D printing. In fact, we'd argue that a bespoke approach is not only widely accessible but essential for true disruption. Bespoke needs to drive the technology, not follow it, otherwise you'll end up with an output which is no more than a cheaper or faster version of a legacy solution. And that can't be "disruptive" for long.
A bespoke approach to strategy envisioning doesn't mean inventing a whole new set of tools for every case. What makes it bespoke is that it starts from the organisation's own people and ecosystem – customers, suppliers, employees, community. First, you identify all the different user groups, some of which you may have been ignoring. Readers of Caroline Criado Perez' Invisible Women, particularly men, may be surprised how many products and services are designed without taking account of women's needs. There may be many other "invisible" groups within your ecosystem. Some of those invisible users may be individuals – eg women customers – while others may be the kinds of communities – citizens, neighbours – to which we all belong at the same time as being individuals. A simple methodology can unlock the insights from the whole ecosystem in order to deliver a bespoke vision and strategy. Like bespoke tailoring, bespoke envisioning uses a simple set of tools to deliver results which will always be different, through the application of skills and experience to individual circumstances.
But can you afford to implement a bespoke strategy, even if you can afford to envision one? Put it the other way around, can you afford not to? Take a smartphone, which now – at least in the emerging economies – can be bought for a few dollars. As soon as it's bought and used, every smartphone becomes bespoke as its owner personalises it with her own choice of apps and music and probably her own photos on the display. Apple's business model goes further by creating an ecosystem in which a wide range of actors from Apple's own people to independent app designers and musicians are all responding to the needs of their diverse user communities, providing bespoke solutions within the framework of a single set of offerings.
Until recently, it seemed that uniformity driven by automation had replaced bespoke throughout all but the most expensive market segments. With the latest technologies, bespoke is back. But while it's technology once again that enables bespoke, it's the strategic mindset that must drive it. That's what we call envisioning.