The Disruptor Podcast
"The Disruptor Series," your blueprint for groundbreaking innovation, started as a periodic segment of the Apex Podcast. This is not your standard conversation around Design Thinking or Product Market Fit—this is the series that dares to go beyond conventional wisdom, confronting the status quo and exposing the raw power of disruptive thinking.
Our journey begins with intensely provocative dialogues that set the stage for the unexpected. With a focus on Experience Disruptors, Product Market Fit, and a host of other captivating topics, we bring you face-to-face with the ideas that are flipping the script on traditional buying and selling experiences.
But we don't stop at ideas; we dive into their real-world applications. "The Disruptor" brings you an unfiltered look into the lives and minds of those who are either being disrupted, creating disruption, or strategically navigating through disruption.
Our guests range from industry veterans to daring newcomers, all willing to share their experiences in shifting the paradigms that define their stakeholders' experiences.
If you're tired of business as usual and eager to question the preconceived notions that hold back innovation, "The Disruptor Series" is your ticket to a transformative journey. Tune in, disrupt yourself, and become an agent of change in an ever-evolving landscape.
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The Disruptor Podcast
Innovating With Design Thinking: From 'Cupcakes' to "Blue Ocean" Triumphs
Prepare to have your entrepreneurial mindset revolutionized as we introduce you to the marriage of design thinking and strategic innovation. Imagine starting your product journey with a 'cupcake'—a delectable morsel of customer delight, rather than settling for the bare-bones functionality of a typical 'minimum viable product.' This episode guides you through an Agile-inspired 'cake roadmap' that promises to sprinkle delight at every development stage, serving up practical advice for remote collaboration and iterative testing, designed to steer your ventures toward a mouthwatering product-market fit.
As the tide of competition rises, we sail into the uncharted waters of the Blue Ocean Strategy, alongside design thinking tenets, to discover unspoiled market territories. You'll glean insights into how companies, like Uber, have navigated away from the bloodied 'red oceans' of fierce rivalry, toward the serene 'blue' where untapped client needs await. We'll also celebrate the genius of inclusive design, taking cues from OXO's Good Grips and Roku's simplified remote, to showcase how products tailored to extreme user needs can result in universally loved solutions.
Finally, we explore the democratic revolution transforming the creative process within today's design thinking framework. We discuss how a chorus of diverse voices, from end users to cross-discipline experts, can harmonize to foster innovation beyond the capabilities of a solitary visionary. This collective symphony of perspectives not only enriches the design process but also amplifies personal growth, nudging us toward a consciousness revolution powered by technological and communicative leaps. Join us for a journey that promises to be as enlightening as it is thought-provoking, packed with actions you can apply directly to your next creative endeavor.
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You might have different points of view, but we're not separate. Design thinking democratizes that creative process to allow those different points of view to work collectively and together in order to achieve an outcome, as opposed to a single individual identifying the hill and then executing against it. And when you have that diversity of voice in the room, you get better outcomes, you get better solutions, you get things that are more representative of the community that you wish to serve.
John Kundtz:Last thing of this piece of this is, obviously we've started it sort of as at a convergent point, we've diverged, we've now converged and then we sort of now diverged again, because we've got all these ideas and all these capabilities, we've matched them up and we're prioritized. Now, as an entrepreneur and even as a customer, you can't implement everything at once, especially in something that's new and transformational than nobody's really ever done before. So we came up with this idea of developing this, what I call the Agile-based roadmap or the Agile-based strategic plan, to help identify those value props. So the idea is, all those things that are really important to the customer and match our immediate capability so they end up in the top left hand corner, right hand corner are what we want to focus on. So I love this concept and design thinking and I think because, if you'd expound upon this whole idea of developing the cake roadmap the cupcake, the birthday cake, the wedding cake- Absolutely, john.
Nicholas Jayanty:So a lot of times we'll hear the word MVP minimum viable product and I think what this activity does is it reframes what the minimum viable product is, to think of it more as the minimum delightful experience right, because the minimum viable product is often driven by what's on the truck, what's feasible today. Well, the minimum delightful experience is what's the smallest piece of value that we can deliver to the user right now, right? So when we talk about the kind of cake roadmap, right, what's that cupcake? Right, if the big vision for the whole business is this, right, and that's the wedding cake. You know the whole shebang. You know it's a little fuzzy.
Nicholas Jayanty:You know, maybe we don't quite understand what this wedding cake looks like. You know, maybe we're not sure how many candles, how many layers, if it's sprinkles or fondant, you know icing, we're not really sure. But we know we have kind of a general sense. But you know the famous, you know how do you eat an elephant, you know, is one bite at a time. It's like, well, what's that minimum cupcake that still has that yummy taste of that wedding cake, but small enough and yummy enough that if we just give that to an end user they'll be happy They'll say give me more, what's next?
Nicholas Jayanty:And so the activity of scoping your roadmap around, this idea of what's the minimum delightful experience, what's the follow on, kind of experiences, allows you to scope that project in a way that you, you know you're minimizing the collateral damage of a failed experiment, right, but keeping it small. You're delivering something delicious but also minimizing, you know, the damage, the collateral damage, if that cupcake maybe isn't the right, is the right piece, Maybe you, you know, the mix isn't quite perfect, but you've at least scoped something that you can deliver Ideally. It has the value that your user expects, but it's small enough that, if it's not, you can make another cupcake really quickly you as an entrepreneur on a startup, you don't have time to build and sell the wedding cake.
John Kundtz:You people don't even know if they want to get married yet, right, they don't even know if they want to date yet. So the idea of building cupcakes help you, and so this is what came up with. This idea is this is how you you know, you come up with cupcakes, you go test them and by doing this iteration of convergence, divergence, divergence, convergence, divergence, convergence, right, we've converged on our cupcake. And now in, if you go through the step, I would some eyes that your odds of having good market fit have increased dramatically. You know, by the way, it doesn't cost a lot to do this. In fact, in today's world, virtually is.
John Kundtz:That's why the last picture on this slide is you know, nicholas and I used to travel all over the world. We've been to Germany, we've been to London, I've been to South Africa, we've been Hong Kong or Singapore doing these workshops and working with our clients through this process, and now we can do it all virtually. Me, we had to because we're all. I mean, I haven't been on a travel for business in over eighteen months. So, as we wrap this section up, the message is, you know, by the way, we will put a link in or will give some capability. If anybody is listening or watching, wants this sort of this sort of five step process for market fit, better market fit, we're happy to share it. But but that's sort of why I wanted to tie the experience that Nicholas has as a designer to the work that you on and I are doing with with entrepreneurs and start up.
Nicholas Jayanty:So that's that section you know, and just to add to that, john, like when I think about what I would do if I was starting a business today, I think I like what are five cupcakes that are kind of close to my wedding cake you know, they're kind of in the vein of my wedding cake and find the cheapest way to figure out if people care about it, like, and that would be in a standard process. A standard kind of practice, like with each business I would launch is like what are my five cupcakes each month until I kind of which my way to product market fit?
John Kundtz:Yeah, and that actually goes into the next up sort of thing I want to just pick your brain about and I'm gonna start with another story again if you guys don't mind, but it's just a term actually that you introduced to me to is it's a and a fi, find a need and fill it. Now I want to tie that back to a book that, if every entrepreneur listening to this section hasn't read, it's called the blue ocean strategy and I want to give an example and I want to try to show you how Nicholas and I have sort of taken the concept of working and selling in a blue ocean and how we've applied design thinking to sort of enhance that for anybody that's listening to this definitely go read that book.
Jan Almasy:Like what? If we're posting the video, you're gonna see me doing the raise, the roof motion. That book is phenomenal and like I'm getting my notebook out to Take notes on this section specifically.
John Kundtz:So these, these, these charts obviously will be available, the video, but I'm happy to share them with others. So this actually sort of ties into what we just talked about, right? This, this idea of my capability, is not to start up, what do I sell, basically, what is my product or service do? And then, on the other line, is this idea of the prospects, needs and right in the last section we talked about how we have Hi needs and high capability, we have a good market fit, but what really happens in the world today is our prospect needs are presented by these red dots and our Capability is, on the other, access right. And what happens is that's where so many people go in and sort of try to do this feature function selling right. Here's your need, here's my capability, here's my need, is your capability right? So it's this idea of back and forth, back and forth.
John Kundtz:What I like to say is that if you those of you that are my age and watch the lost in space, it's like when the robot would go danger will warbans and danger, danger. You are now swimming in the red ocean. In other words, you are just in a feature function battle with a hundred other Companies and a hundred other product or services and you're just gonna beat your head down on on cost. And so what most sales people do Is they go well, I'm gonna upsell, I'm gonna tell you about the value ads. So they start talking about more capability the client doesn't, theory, doesn't, hasn't said they need. Well, unfortunately, the prospect of the buyer perceives that is increased costs and complexity, which of course, slows your deal down. That was the exact problem we had after we bought the company. We started talking about all the red dots and all the green dots and all of a sudden the client's going holy crap, this is gonna be really expensive and it's gonna take me forever to deploy and implement. So I would argue also, the question is how do I get out of this red ocean and into the blue ocean? And so the concept is this is sort of a sort of basic but, but, but sort of.
John Kundtz:And then the necklace you actually alluded to it when we started up, which was sort of cool because we had rehearsed this. It's how do you Uncover the clients of the prospects, unconsidered needs, right? So it's how do you know, how do you identify problems and needs the prospect does not even know they have, which is a classic example of being a disruptor. Right it's I'm met. You know uber is probably the greatest one who you know, whoever thought that you would want to, you know, order a car service from a total stranger On an app, right and disrupt the taxi cab. So the taxicabs were off fighting in this red ocean. You know it came up and figure out there are a whole bunch of things that the, that the me is a drive, is a rider. Didn't even know I needed, but once I realized that and they showed it to me, it opened up the blue ocean.
Nicholas Jayanty:I love this. I think one of my favorite you know, product design case studies to illustrate this is some of the work that I also your kitchen come kitchen product company. They make good grips. I'm sure people are familiar with them and what made that story so interesting Is that they knew they had a target audience, right, target target segments that they're going after Marketing standpoint. But from a product design standpoint, what they said was we're gonna design for the end user that has the greatest impairment. I'm using their hands, focus on senior citizens, focus on people with arthritis, and we're gonna design our product to meet their needs. And so by picking that extreme user that's often not considered right, I'm designing their product for them. They're able to satisfy the needs of their entire segment.
Nicholas Jayanty:So my starting kind of in the extreme, on that edge, a person, a group of people that's often ignored. You know, our senior citizens, senior community are often ignored when hipsters are making technology. There's this whole world of unmet need that you know I tapped into has been incredibly successful result I mean, right now we have the you know the iphone right? One question I ask myself is you know, I observed my grandmother using, using your iphone and all she does the navigate is press the back button. She picked something, she goes down a tunnel and if it's the wrong tunnel, she's back, back, back, back, back, starts at the top and then goes down again and this is how her interaction behavior.
Nicholas Jayanty:But Nobody's designing an interface that's gonna support that behavior right, those interfaces aren't out there. No one's designing phones, no one's dividing devices for these for these people. No one's designing devices for children, right? We're just trying to find. Like you know, right now, if you look at the design of our technology, it's it's. It's like those crazy or it's like those remote controls that your cable company gives you with like 200 buttons. It's like there's all the features and, like you know, apple came out and made like two buttons and three buttons. It was really easy to use one of my favorite examples.
John Kundtz:There's the cable company remote and if you've ever had, if you're bought a Roku TV and you look at the Roku remote, they designed it the hand, the grip that you could. I mean they did a lot of design and like six buttons on it.
Nicholas Jayanty:Yeah, but. But you don't get there until you start thinking about the users with unmet needs or the users that weren't considered. You know there's extremes, the fringe, like you know I think one of my favorite books, it's like by Chip and Dan Heath, called decisive. You know they say there's like four horsemen of bad decision-making and one of them is narrow framing. That's one of the big ones, which is I'm only looking at this tunnel, I haven't expanded the aperture and thought beyond kind of that red ocean in the fringes of the blue ocean and find that opportunity there.
Jan Almasy:Yeah, I think One thing that I'm gonna Double-click on as far as process goes, I think we're gonna like this episode's coined phrase is gonna be double-click because we've all used at this point. So we, we do a lot of research into Disney, you know, when we first started, when we first started apex, and he has this interesting thing like four levels of detail, right, and he would also force the Imagineers when they were coming up with ideas. It's like you have to be able to still this down to one sentence If, like, I don't care if it's a new door hinge or if it's a new ride for the park, one sentence as to why, like, we need to do this, right, what is the value prop in that one sentence. And I find it interesting because some of the people that I talked to, at least in the area that I'm in now I'm finally expanding outside of the Midwest and meeting a bunch of different people but when we first started, especially in Kobe, but we, what we were encountering when we were talking to all these people is a very, very anxious mindset when we started to take them into, that first diverge, right, it's like they get all of this influx of ideas and then they're like, oh my god, like I don't know what I'm gonna do with all of this.
Jan Almasy:But what I found fascinating is actually, the more time you're able to be disciplined in that space where there's a lot of different ideas, the simpler the outcome becomes. You know and like John just made a great point with Roku it's like the more time you spend in the quote-unquote anxiety of the unknown, you end up with six buttons instead of 200. It's really really easy To say let's put all of the features on the remote. It is exponentially more difficult to figure out which six buttons I'm gonna cuss here. So what six buttons? People actually give a shit about right.
Nicholas Jayanty:Yep, yep, it's easy to put out the kitchen sink into the product. It's hard to prioritize. People like to prioritize a risk averse. They don't want to be the one that made the decision, you know. So there's a lot of reasons why people have difficulty picking those six buttons.
Nicholas Jayanty:Dude is so important and a lot of design is about reducing that complexity. Right, it's. A lot of design is removing stuff, like we'll see these interface that are designed by engineers and we're like lose that, lose that, lose that, lose that. Why do we need this? What's the user trying to do with this page? Okay, that's the priority. Let's remove all the fluff from this page and only focus on the key interaction that the user cares about in this context and remove the noise right.
John Kundtz:I want to give you the last word, nicholas, on something that you brought up with me, and I'm not sure I even understand it. So I'm sort of looking forward it, and you had mentioned something about democratizing the creative process, and so I it really caught my eye. I mean, we had a few discussions on it, but I'd love you to just sort of expound on that for us.
Nicholas Jayanty:Yeah, it actually dovetails really nice of what we were just talking about. Right, like people making decisions right, how do those decisions get made? And you know, for design thinking right for the longest time, you know, going back to that kind of great person or great man theory of history, there's this vision area. There's a tour, you know, that has this mega opus, vision, magnum opus, vision, and we're all just kind of actors in his show and we're trying to help.
Nicholas Jayanty:When we democratize the creative process, it's very disruptive because it allows a lot more diversity into that creative process. So, instead of just one person kind of having a software, a vision for a software, you know it's the difference between making a product and a hundred million dollar art project right, and an art project is a single visionary kind of directing. You know the Banksy model or Banksy's the name, but there's 200 artists making his work right. Versus an effort where you democratize the creative process, you're bringing in your end users, you're bringing in different subject matter experts, you're bringing in a lot of different points of view to really vet that idea before you invest in developing it. So what design thinking really allows people to do is to collaborate in a structured way, bring a diverse point of view to those collaborative activities and look at the problem through the same lens, with that kind of difference that they bring. You know, we might be different but we're not separate. We might have different points of view but we're not separate. And design thinking democratizes that creative process to allow those different points of view to work collectively and together in order to achieve an outcome, as opposed to a single individual identifying the hill and then executing against it right. And when you have that diversity of voice in the room, you get better outcomes, you get better solutions, you get things that are more representative of the community that you wish to serve.
John Kundtz:Well said, If anybody liked what they saw today, I'm happy to share the disruptors five steps, the better market fit chart, and I've also prepared the disruptors the design thinking primer which I'm happy to share. And you know we can work in the show notes or reach out directly with direct message to me on LinkedIn or Twitter or something. But hopefully you found this enjoyable. Nicholas, you and I could probably talk for another two hours. Yon, I'm gonna let you have the last word.
Jan Almasy:What if I chop liver over here? I feel like I could hang out for two more hours. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John Kundtz:Well, no, but Nicholas and I. You know, I bring on people.
John Kundtz:You guys go way back yeah so, but you know what I always say, yon, you're sort of my brother from a different mother because we sort of came from the same part of the world. But Nicholas and I are definitely like brothers from a different mother and we he has made me like probably whichever brain is, the creative side he is definitely got me trying to be more creative and I think I'm helping him look at how to apply all these cool things he does and take it outside into the real world and talk to people that actually want to buy stuff. So I appreciate, yon, you having us on today and it was been very good. Yeah, namaste, as we used said to my last guest, who was anyway, so I'm not ever yeah. So, yon, anything else you want to? Well, conclude as the host.
Jan Almasy:I just I just want to say how appreciative I am of being able to be around these types of conversations, right. So so I mean, like I kind of went off on that original tangent where I'm just like fascinated with the, the neurology and the biology behind what you're doing right, and so making this transition and meeting John, you know, john kind of put it lightly where he was, like you know, I taught Yonis for something the empathy map, and the reason he is because I was trying to come up with a physical business model that would not work, and he was like this is not bueno, let's, let's take you down a different rabbit hole before you just waste a whole bunch of time or money developing something that is not going to fit the market right. So, as my first lesson, like coming up on two plus years ago now and I've been obsessed with it ever since so, understanding that there are all of these minds, you know, working on the intimate connection between psychology, sales, marketing, you know, creating safe spaces, questions, games, all of these different things to get humans to interact better, I have this, this thing, that I'll just kind of you know leave at the end of the episode here that we're going through a consciousness revolution right now. You know, like the human, the human body, the human brain, that we've gone through these stages. If you like, look at history where, you know, we had the bubonic plague and then the Renaissance, and then we had the flu of 1918 and we had the roaring 20s, you know, and now we've had COVID and technology got introduced and people are adopting technology, they're getting used to technology and they're, you know, instantaneously communicating.
Jan Almasy:And now there's a group of rena, aspiring Renaissance men I'll call us, you know that are looking at how do we advance humanity inside of this latest context, and I want to make sure that the guests that are listening really understand the gravity of the types of conversations like these that are going on. It's that this is not just, you know, revolutionizing a process. This is humans communicating, completely democratized at scale. We're seeing crazy crap happen in the stock market because of Reddit and 4chan and Twitter and all this instantaneous communication. We're seeing crazy stuff happen in innovation, to John's point. The speed of disruption has drastically increased over the last 30 years and now we're trying to figure out how to slow people down again and get them to communicate with each other. You know, and and using all of these different triggers.
Jan Almasy:So, for anybody that's listening, you know if you're listening right now, you've made it all the way to the end. Go back to the beginning two days from now and re-listen to the episode, because I guarantee there'll be things that you think of when you give your brain that chance to rest and process, things that you'll pick up from the episode, because I know for I'm sitting here recording it and I'm gonna be excited, while I'm post editing it, to listen again and pick up on all of these, these ideas. So thank you both for allowing me to you know kind of host the party. I guess in a way to, so to speak yeah, my pleasure well and for everybody that's listening.
Jan Almasy:You know, we'll make sure that we put stuff in the, in the show notes, in the descriptions and, and, like John said, for right now, the best way to try to get a hold of any of the, you know, materials that were used on the podcast probably just send me a direct message on LinkedIn or go ahead and add John on LinkedIn. John, do you want to let them know how to spell your name so that they can type that in?
John Kundtz:sure it's up. Last name is K U N. D like Delta, t like tango, z like Zulu, so beautiful and then I'm young, all musty, it's young.
Jan Almasy:It looks like Jan, jan, you know all musty, alma SY. And then, nicholas, do you have a LinkedIn as well?
Nicholas Jayanty:yeah, it's a. I believe it's Nicholas Jay auntie J A Y A N T.
Jan Almasy:Y beautiful. You guys want to know any more? Go ahead and follow us on LinkedIn. And until next time in another episode of the disruptor, have a great day, guys.
