Unlocking the Customer Value Chain: How Decoupling Drives Consumer Disruption-Fast Shipping

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Based on eight years ofresearch visiting dozens of startups, tech companies and incumbents, HarvardBusiness School professor Thales Teixeira shows how and why consumer industriesare disrupted, and what established companies can do about it—while highlightingthe specific strategies potential startups use to gain a competitive edge.

There is a pattern to digital disruption in an industry, whether thedisruptor is Uber, Airbnb, Dollar Shave Club, Pillpack or one of countlessother startups that have stolen large portions of market share from industryleaders, often in a matter of a few years.

As Teixeira makes clear, the nature of competition has fundamentallychanged. Using innovative new businessmodels, startups are stealing customers by breaking the links in howconsumers discover, buy and use products and services. By decoupling thecustomer value chain, these startups, instead of taking on the Unilevers andNikes, BMW’s and Sephoras of the world head on, peel away a piece of theconsumer purchasing process. Birchbox offered women a new way to samplebeauty products from a variety of companies from the convenience of theirhomes, without having to visit a store. Turo doesn’t compete with , it offers people the benefit of driving without having to own a carthemselves.

Illustrated with vivid, indepth and exclusive accounts of bothstartups, and reigning incumbents like Best Buy and Comcast, as they struggleto respond, Unlocking the CustomerValue Chain is an essential guide to demystifying how digital disruptiontakes place – and what companies can do to defend themselves.