AI Isn't Just Disruptive, It's Discontinuous

This Has Significant Implications for How You Market It.

If I were to claim that AI is a disruptive innovation, few would disagree with me.

But if I were to claim that AI is discontinuous, few would understand me, yet this is more important.

My experience of marketing multiple discontinuous innovations, including AI, has taught me that when your product requires a shift in the behavior of your customer, you also need a major shift in your approach to marketing it.

So if you’ve heard objections from investors that people won’t change their behavior to adopt your product, or if you’ve seen lower than expected adoption for an AI upgrade to an existing product, this article is for you.

Disruptive ≠ Discontinuous

This is not an academic distinction without a difference. It matters because it reveals very different challenges to overcome with marketing.

Defining Disruptive Innovation

Clayton Christensen popularized the phrase “disruptive innovation” in his book “The Innovators Dilema” with the definition:

Disruptive Innovation describes a process by which a product or service initially takes root in simple applications at the bottom of a market—typically by being less expensive and more accessible—and then relentlessly moves upmarket, eventually displacing established competitors.

Despite Christensen’s quite narrow original definition, nowadays we often just use it to generally mean that something is “shaking up” the market conventions.

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Defining Discontinuous Innovation

Though discontinuous innovation is a far less popular term than disruptive innovation, it is the very definition of types of technologies that move through the adoption curve as described by Geoffrey Moore in his seminal book “Crossing The Chasm.”

Despite common misconception, what makes a product discontinuous is not how much of a leap in sophistication it offers, it is how much of a shift in customer behavior it requires to be adopted.

Moore clarifies this distinction using the example of TV technology”

When Samsung promises shoppers brighter TV, pictures across bigger and bigger screens, these are all continuous innovations as a consumer you don't have to change your ways to take advantage of these improvements.

On the other hand. If the Samsung were a 3D TV, it would be incompatible with normal viewing, requiring you to don special classes to get the special FX. This would be a discontinuous innovation because you would have to change your normal TV viewing behavior.

Therefore discontinuous defined by shift in the user’s behavior, not a shift in the technology or market

Consider These Examples to Understand the Differences:

• Automobiles
  Changing from horses to cars was discontinuous. Introducing the Ford Model T to undercut inaccessible Daimler’s was disruptive. Transitioning from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles requires significant customer behavior change, so is discontinuous.

• Slide Decks
  Google Slides is a free, light disruptor to Powerpoint. Gamma and Tome are discontinuous because you learn to use them in a very different way - via prompting

• Stock Photography
  Pexels is a disrupter to Getty Images, but Midjourney now offers a discontinuous alternative to using stock images at all - if you learn how to use it!

• Eyeglasses
  Warby Parker disrupted Luxottica for stock eyewear, whereas Topology was discontinuous in offering custom eyeglasses from scratch, provided customers were willing to scan their face with an iPhone and style using AR

• Mattresses
  Casper and other “bed-in-a-box” brands disrupted legacy mattresses with the same product for lower cost. A smart mattress like Bryte is discontinuous because you adopt new behaviors when you buy it.

Those last 2 examples are from my own experience as CMO of Topology and Bryte respectively.

Why The Difference Matters

When an innovation is discontinuous it can initially constrain appeal and adoption due to:

• Requiring customers to shift their understanding
  For decades people “Hoovered” the carpet with vacuum cleaners with bags in. Dyson had to explain why the bag was a problem in order to motivate a switch to his discontinuous, bagless alternative

• Incurring additional cost and hassle
  The Shift Invention of an eBike offers tremendous benefits, but costs more money than a pedal bike. You also need to remember to charge it, it’s too heavy to hang from the roof of your garage and you might need to buy a new heavy duty rack to mount it on your car

• Requiring a certain mindset that not everyone will share
  At Bryte we offered a high-end smart mattress that used AI to improve restorative sleep, but some fans of wellness and sleep don’t believe technology belongs in the bedroom, so were not prepared to sleep on a smart mattress despite the benefits.

The customer's readiness to change behavior determines if they are pre or post-chasm consumers for your products.

As a marketer, it's your job to target the right consumers.

This is not just an issue for startups. The issue still applies if you're a product marketer introducing disruptive innovation into an existing product line.

When AI Is Discontinuous

AI products can disrupt markets without necessitating discontinuous behavior changes. However, integrating AI often induces unprecedented user behavior shifts, such as:

• Learning to prompt
  Adopting a new skill of “Prompt Engineering” or simply learning to write good prompts that get the desired result.

  

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• Learning how and when to trust
  Understanding that Generative AI can make factual errors and hallucinations requires users to discern when to trust and when to verify.

• Learning to adapt workflows and systems
  Products like ProcureSpark and XSpecs can significantly decrease response times to an RFP and software delivery lead times respectively, but they require teams to adapt to new methods and workflows.

• Agreeing to invest new budget
  Such as Notion AI, which targets existing Notion users, yet adoption hinges on their readiness to pay 50% extra per seat, not offset by scrapping another product.

The Challenges To Look Out For

If you are marketing a new, innovative product alongside an existing one, you might see…

• Lower adoption than you expect
  Particularly compared to what you might expect when launching a continuous product to existing customers

• Higher churn
  Users may try the product, but will give up if the required shift is unpalatable.

• Increased support burden
  In helping customers navigate these shifts

• Drop in initial engagement
  As described in my previous article The Great Sobering of 2024, Companies marketing AI products in 2023 may have seen temporary user inflation due to general AI hype, but this may wane in 2024

• Confusion and resistance
  From investors who think your customers will struggle to adopt new behaviors, to critics who resist the new paradigms you propose.

Crossing The Schism - How to Market A Discontinuous AI Product

If you are launching a new AI product, even as a mature brand, act like a startup and follow the 'Crossing the Chasm' model to understand how to segment your customers based on their attitudes to being shifted.

• Define innovator and early adopter audiences
  Segment your intended audience to identify those users that have the most pressing need for the problem your AI product will solve, and subdivide again to find those that are most prone to embracing new technologies first

• Research and characterize problems
  Interview that audience to learn about how they perceive the problem, how they value it and how else they are solving it

• Market the problem before the solution
  Getting someone to buy a new product is hard enough. Getting someone to change their world in order to adopt your product is even harder. So it is extra important you clearly state the specific problems of the old way, and why they can only be resolved by your new way

• Invest in user onboarding & support
  Knowing that the user will need to adopt new understanding and behaviors, don’t leave onboarding & customer success to chance.

A Shift In Terminology

The under-discussed topic of discontinuous innovation creates a pitfall for marketers.

Perhaps if the concept were easier to explain and understand, it would be discussed more frequently. Having previously struggled to clarify discontinuous innovation, I believe a new phrase that emphasizes the impact on the user, rather than the market, could help.

I like “Shift Inventions” as it is easier to say, write and more naturally focuses on the disruption to the user than the disruption to the market.

What do you think?

Let me know with a comment or restack below!

And as always, if you have thoughts, questions or feedback, DM me on LinkedIn or comment below.