Business
Breaking one step off from the rest succeeds because it cuts the time, money, and effort a customer spends to get what they want. People prefer to pick the best provider for each step rather than accept one company's whole package. Breaking up the chain feeds that wish.
Disruption is about making the consumer's life easier, not about the technology itself. Technology is just the tool for removing effort from the customer's path. That is why disruption is best understood through marketing and how customers behave, not through engineering or general strategy.
A company that handles only one activity avoids the cost of keeping the entire chain running. That lets a small startup short on cash compete with far richer firms. It wins on the steps it chooses and never has to match them on everything else.
The first wave split products apart so buyers could take only the most valuable pieces. The second wave cut out the middlemen. The latest wave splits apart the customer's journey itself, so it works at the level of the customer's activities rather than the product.
Rivals break off the steps that established firms handle badly or don't notice are frustrating customers. A firm that forgets what customers ultimately need, and treats them as pawns, opens exactly those gaps. Firms that truly remove customer frustrations have little to fear.
Newcomers rarely try to win customers away from big companies wholesale. Instead they take over a single step in how people find, buy, or use a product, such as sampling it or getting access to it. They leave the established company to handle the rest. A home-sharing service, for example, doesn't build hotels; it supplies only the place to stay.
Every purchase forces the customer through a chain of activities: discovering, evaluating, buying, using, and disposing of a product. Seen from the customer's side, each of these steps is a cost in time, money, or effort. Each step is also a place where a rival can step in.
A rival can separate the benefit people want from the product that normally delivers it. Peer-to-peer car rental, for instance, offers the experience of driving without anyone having to own a car. It competes with the carmaker without ever building a car.
Taking over one step is a strategy for getting into a market, not a finished business. A newcomer has a sturdy, viable business only after it has fully mastered the essential activity it took over. Only then can it build outward.