新时代的颠覆观：管理顾客的预期值

    如果你的顾客不希望现有观念被颠覆，你该如何颠覆他们的观念呢？

    在《财富》科技头脑风暴大会（Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference）的一次圆桌会议上，企业家和来自一些快速发展的公司的高管们齐聚一堂，讨论这些新锐公司应该如何颠覆市场现状。但是他们讨论的重点并不在于如何取代现有的强大对手，而是就另一项挑战进行了生动的讨论——也就是如何颠覆顾客的观念。

    无线宽带服务供应商阿鲁巴网络公司（Aruba Network）的CEO柯万柯称：“顾客往往会抵触颠覆性的观念，因此新锐公司任重道远。”

    柯万柯的解决方法是，让别人来说服顾客，使他们相信变革是件好事。柯万柯说：“在iPad问世之前，我说起分布式存取环境，总觉得自己像一个卖草药的，（别人总是不大相信你的疗效）。而在iPad大热后，人们纷纷找上门来，仿佛我是卖阿斯匹林的。”【会议的主持人、来自麻省理工大学的许拉吉此时打趣道：“史蒂夫•乔布斯成了你的特洛伊木马了。”】

    智能商务公司Domo的CEO约什•詹姆斯（同时也是Omiture公司的创始人，现在Omiture已并入Adobe）指出，顾客并非总是知道什么对他们来说才是好的。他说，一个颠覆性企业家最重要的技能之一，就是要“有勇气”无视顾客说他们眼下需要什么。“我们要着眼于顾客潜在的需求，打造超出顾客预期的产品。”

    译者：朴成奎

    How do you disrupt when your customers don't want to be disrupted?

    At a roundtable conversation at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colo., a group of entrepreneurs and fast-growing company executives convened to discuss the ways upstarts are trying to shake up the status quo. But rather than focusing on the incumbents they are seeking to displace, the disruptors engaged in a lively conversation about a different challenge: shaking up customers.

    "Customers don't want disruption," said Dominic Orr, CEO of Aruba Networks (ARUN). "They have a job to do."

    Orr's solution? Let someone else convince customers that change is good. "Before the iPad I'd go in to talk about a distributed access environment, and I felt like I was pitching herbal medicines," Orr said. "After the iPad I felt like people were coming to me for asprin." (Which led moderator Michael Schrage of MIT to quip: "Steve Jobs is your Trojan Horse.")

    Josh James, CEO of Domo and founder of Ominture (now part of Adobe (ADBE)), noted that customers don't always know what's good for them. He says one of the top skills of a disruptor is to "have the courage" to ignore what customers tell him they think they need. "We need to create a better version of a product that they're going to want."