The Next Wave of Disruption in Consumer Products (2020)

Ideas that could make or break New Realities for B2C Products and Platforms in the Post-Pandemic Economy.

I don’t mean to scare anybody. The idea behind starting a new publication that bends interactive realities for consumer platforms, is powerful enough to inspire visuals that are decidedly a little off-radius.

InternetCompany.xyz is an extension of the ideas that drove true disruption in the early years of personal computing.

There once lived a man who saw the future and then set about building it. The company he imagined and built from the ground-up, serves as a true outlier both in the world of superior innovation, and in an ecosystem of brand communique that often intersects rather badly.

Apple is the perfect example of an idea that bends reality as much as it changes the world, driven by its stark adherence to the disruption principle. Brand strategists such as Marty Neumeier have liberally splashed accolades on the various creative synergies that enable a direct line of communication between Apple and its user-base, through the use of content and imagery that transcends minimalism, and gradually slips into the realm of nothingness.

All that really remains, then, is the special ‘connection’ between an Apple product and an Apple user (loyalist). Is there really a #method to go about achieving this level of loyalty as a technology product or brand?

To anyone with a deviously creative mind, Steve’s words from the famous “Here’s to the crazy ones” speech, can be deduced as a little more than mere motivation. If you look closely, it also serves as a direct set of instructions on how to become a true disruptor (after identifying yourself as a potential Übermensch).

The craziest part is, if you go about replacing the idea of a “human” or living übermensch, with that of an artificially intelligent but “superior” platform, it could very well serve to become a “round peg” in a “square hole” that the internet seems to appear, to a lot of interesting technology founders.

Breaking The Internet Once Again: A Starter Program To Disruption

So, how do you go about “Breaking the Internet” with anything new that you’re trying to build? This is especially important to understand, when you (and presumably your UX/Design teams) are busy brainstorming ways to let your product’s features build a truly habit-forming product.

Many companies tend to lean into a straightforward SWOT analysis, or some other discernibly intelligent approach that always makes sense on paper, but 99% of the founders that I’ve had the pleasure of working with personally, agree with me on this one important truth — It’s hard to come up with a formula that is actually going to work wonders in terms of being able to imagine and deploy truly viral loops into consumer interfaces. What is really going to drive one loyal user to invite another dozen potentially early adopters into your platform?

Is it the exclusivity that you may or may not choose to offer to an ‘evolved’ beta audience (e.g. within a supercharged incubation community such as Y Combinator?)

Is it the incentive that your users reap/perceive when they successfully add others to the platform?

An approach that seems to have worked countless times for bizarrely successful product creators, is to first imagine that everything is possible, and then trim away at everything that your users don’t need.

I’m going to repeat this, for effect. Or not. You get the idea.

We stand once again, at the cusp of a potential shift in the culture-scape.

If you pay attention to the widely divergent curves that are representative of changes in consumer-technology, you understand that the “general ethics of purpose” surrounding consumer applications (more specifically, internet applications) have changed very rapidly since the very first web-browsers appeared. Average consumer faith in digital transactions, has seen a huge boost. We went from an economy that was scared at the idea of “Typewriters attached to Television screens”, to one that eats, breathes, and excretes personal computing technology in every fractal of life.

This begs the final question — is the secret to disruption in consumer interfaces really linked to features, or the idea that something totally inconceivable (as inconceivable as the idea of a rodent-sized gadget to the big suits at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in 1967) can unleash a wave of technological loyalty to your brand?

In the post-pandemic world, where everything outside the internet has become a whirlwind of chaos, can you, dear innovator, then develop a semblance of true order, with your next chaotic idea?

Open to thoughts in comments.