The Decoupling Method Harvard Teaches First

Digital disruption is not a stroke of genius but a process that can be engineered. Follow the tools and frameworks and you build a high-growth startup far more reliably than by trusting intuition.

Uber did not win because cars or drivers were scarce. There were already enough of both; what Uber stole was a single weak link, the matchmaking that connects riders to drivers.

The customer value chain is the series of activities we must perform to acquire, use, and dispose of goods. The first move is to map that chain and find the weak link customers hate most.

Decoupling breaks apart links that incumbents had historically bundled together, usually by a digital player. Uber and Kakao broke the link of meeting and sold riders peace of mind instead.

Every activity in a value chain is value-creating, value-capturing, or value-eroding, so there are only three kinds of decoupling. Twitch broke value creation, Steam value erosion, Fortnite value capture.

Investors value the value-creating decoupler most of the three. The others can still grow enormously, but venture capitalists prefer founders who separate and attack the value-creating activity.

Succeeding at disruption does not guarantee you make money. There is no law that says delivering value lets you capture it, and a founder only learns the economics after building and scaling.

The single most important step is finding the weakest link: the moment in the buying process customers are most unhappy with, where money, time, or effort runs too high, is the best point of entry.