Innovation is about embracing the risk of failure and setting yourself up to iterate, test, validate and execute quickly. Disrupting an industry requires learning, acknowledging and respecting the things that led the industry to where it is today. Only once you understand the inefficiencies in an industry can you know where and how to innovate. In my decades of experience in tech and startups, I’ve seen a pattern of common stumbling blocks to success. With a little focus and a lot of trust in your vision and team, you can address some of the recurring factors that keep companies from innovating quickly.

1. Entrenched Incumbents With Deep Pockets

Make allies.

To completely disrupt a huge and moneyed industry, you too need an enormous amount of money, right? Nope. If that were true, how would Wayfair have been profitable in their first month of operation or how would Cards Against Humanity have grossed $12 million in their first year in the highly crowded billion dollar toys and games space?

One way to avoid this problem is by learning and evolving within the industry instead of trying to break it with an attack from the outside.

Early on at The Zebra, we tried to disrupt the industry from the “outside” and quickly ran into roadblocks. With insurance companies spending billions on advertising and building their brands, they didn’t want to be commoditized and compared based only on price. They do want, however, to be a part of the consideration set when people are searching for insurance (and consumers are increasingly using technology to find insurance and compare multiple options). So, we had to figure out how to work with the insurance industry and effect change from within.

As an unbiased insurance search engine, The Zebra reflects that differentiation in our product, offering value to consumers by educating them on insurance and coverage and comparing on a variety of factors like claims satisfaction and roadside assistance — not simply price. 

We didn’t take a straight line to our vision, but we never lost sight of it. Iterating on our idea gave us the strongest foundation possible with the resources we had.