Creating an arms-length nightmare disruptor for a Finnish listed company

One of Finland’s largest listed companies with a leading position in northern Europe came to Shift with a nightmare. It was their CEO’s worst nightmare.

This nightmare scenario was based on the fact that the client operated in a traditional, legacy-driven industry that was already showing initial signs of potential future disruption based on movements among non-market actors.

With the “Nightmare as a service” concept Shift explored the CEO nightmare with the goal of:

1. Understanding how a new or existing market actor could disrupt the industry
2. Understanding what this disruption could look like
3. Understanding if the client could build this disruptor themselves, instead of waiting for someone else to do it

Shift Actions set up a cross-functional strategic task force consisting of 3 business designers, one service designer, one brand/marketing strategist and finally a full-stack developer/technology lead.

This team started with a clean slate. The only thing limiting the team was a) the product and b) the B2C market. Other than that the team was given full freedom in order to create the most efficient and threatening concept the market could envision.

A few of the outcomes included:

1. A long-list of seven defined disruption scenarios
2. One validated disruption strategy and business concept tested with over 5 thousand consumers across 7 markets. The concept was created to provide the best customer experience in the industry, backed up by a truly data-driven organization
3. An initial customer CRM-base of over 1 thousand customers
4. A clear business plan, budget and investment proposal to the senior management team outlining how the client could build and launch the nightmare disruption concept in 5 months

Through extensive concept validation and iteration, Shift Actions was able to present client management with a robust investment proposal and business case for decision making in order to make the disruptor a reality.