In today’s vastly complex economic landscape, many companies would like to be the “disruptor” instead of being the “disrupted” — that is, they want to find a new niche in a certain industry, a problem no one’s yet been able to solve or one nobody’s aware of, and they want to exploit this niche and solve this problem, thereby upending their industry with next-gen technology and unprecedented business methods.

However, with every disruptive tech company, there are obvious caveats and pitfalls to note, and it behooves would-be entrepreneurs and innovators to observe and learn from both the successes and the mistakes of their recent forebears.

A new technology disrupting the fashion photo industry

Let’s look at a Focal Media Group, creator and producer of the disruptive StyleShoots photography machine. StyleShoots, which is being heralded as “The next generation photo studio,” puts more power in the hands of major fashion retailers and the creative agencies they work with. Essentially, the machine, which would take up most of a small studio or room, automates much of the work associated with photo editing, such as basic Photoshopping. Its interface is extremely user-friendly and could even allow someone with very little photography experience to create consistently high-quality image content. This allows major fashion retailers and brands to cut down on production costs and time to market, allowing for huge revenue growth by granting them longer sales windows. For creative agencies, having a StyleShoots machine does much of the same, allowing them to turn around quality content much more quickly than before; this, in turn, frees agencies up to compete for more business and puts them ahead of their competition in general.

Now, while this technology could have wide applications in the photography world, they’re already seeking to carve out a niche for themselves—fashion product photography—before seeking to expand; this is a wise move, in my opinion, as such a young company wouldn’t want to spread themselves too thin, so to speak, by trying to appeal to a broader range of industries.

By relegating themselves to the world of fashion product photography, Focal Media Group has already gained a slew of high-profile brands as clients: Macy’s, Triumph, Forever 21, Toys R Us, Zalando, Woolworths, and Scotch & Soda, to name a few. They’ve also sold StyleShoots machines to major creative agencies like Pure Red and Undefeated Creative.

Clearly, this is a technology to keep an eye out for, because these early adopters are already experiencing the benefits of reduced photography and production costs, as well as a reduced time to market.

However, it would still behoove the StyleShoots/Focal Media folks to pay attention to their recent forebears and to take close note of their respective successes and shortcomings. Here are some things they should be wary of and willing to address:

Lowering the barrier of entry

While the StyleShoots machine is being adopted by major fashion retailers, very few people in the industry are aware of its technology and the savings and added revenue it could likely provide. This means Focal Media Group could stand to use both social and traditional media to expand their marketing campaign in order to create awareness. If the only thing preventing a product from turning its target industry upside down is awareness, a solid marketing campaign will prove invaluable as other recent successes have discovered.

Learning from the new big boys: Airbnb and Uber

I’ve written extensively about companies like Airbnb and Uber — how they’ve disrupted their respective industries and succeeded at creating enormous, widely acclaimed brands and user experiences. However, these organizations have succeeded hugely in some areas of business and failed spectacularly in others.

Let’s look at how a company like Focal Media Group can benefit from paying attention to what Airbnb’s been doing these past few years.

In the upcoming documentary Design Disruptors, Airbnb Head of Experience Design Katie Dill gives some insight into what makes the company so effective from a design standpoint: essentially, Airbnb leverages design and aesthetics to facilitate a better overall user experience, which has clearly proved successful. According to Clark Valberg — CEO of InVision, the company producing Design Disruptors — “Airbnb’s Katie Dill explains that the design team is not a ‘design’ team, but an ‘experience’ team. They consider every touch point with a user, from first click to when a guest enters a host’s home, a point within an intentionally-designed, overarching brand experience. They stay true to this vision by including their community in their experience design processes.”

Here, Valberg and Dill are effectively touting design as a means to creating a more comprehensive, friendlier, more beautiful user experience, which, as we all know, is key to the success of any startup.

Focal Media Group would do well to focus on creating a user experience that makes prospective clients feel at ease, like they can easily operate the StyleShoots machine or teach their colleagues how to use it. The experience should also explicitly illustrate how brands, retailers, and agencies stand to benefit from using StyleShoots and its related products for their photography.

Now, let’s take a look at Uber in terms of user experience and quality control. It’s hardly a secret that the company’s come under a great deal of fire of late: numerous accusations, worldwide, of sexually aggressive, predatory, or even outright violent drivers (which equates in the minds of customers to lax hiring policies and a company that implicitly doesn’t care about the safety of its riders); accusations of “digging up dirt” on journalists who would criticize the company; accusations of real-life sabotage committed against rival companies like Lyft; accusations of stealing jobs from local taxi drivers and attempting to undermine their unions.

Naturally, this has turned into a complete PR fiasco for Uber. And even though the company is often accused of malfeasances for which they’re not directly responsible, these numerous and public gaffes represent blood in the water, making the company rife for criticism and attack from its competition.

Lessons learned

Focal Media Group’s lesson from this? Pay attention to what people are saying about you in real-time. Pay closer attention to both the quality of your product and how you can keep it as high as possible and the user experience. If you have an amazing product and a friendly, inviting user experience with an easy-to-use interface, you likely won’t have to worry about many of the problems we see Uber experiencing now.

Of course, Focal Media Group and their StyleShoots machine is only one pertinent example out of thousands of startups seeking with gusto to break into their respective industries and disrupt them. But if you’re a company on the verge of disrupting a major industry, you would do well to observe your more successful and noteworthy predecessors, to mark both their successes and their failures, and to learn from both these notions to better your own company and more effectively facilitate the disruption you seek to implement.

Bio:

DANIEL BURRUS is considered one of the world’s leading technology forecasters and innovation experts, and is the founder and CEO of Burrus Research, a research and consulting firm that monitors global advancements in technology driven trends to help clients understand how technological, social and business forces are converging to create enormous untapped opportunities. He is the author of six books including The New York Times best seller Flash Foresight. Daniel Burrus is also the creator of The Anticipatory Organization™ Learning System, a training process for executives and their teams to develop the skills to accurately foresee and take critical actions before disruption strikes.