Is “The Box” a disruptive innovation?

Earlier this month I’ve stumbled upon the company “LivingPackets”. I’ve already assessed their creative financing scheme – which is based on funding with money from people with limited knowledge in finance. You can learn more about the scheme here in German and here in French. In this article I want to explore weather the “The Box” has the potential to become a disruptive innovation as they claim. In a future article next week, I will dig deeper into the rest of the company’s claims. Stay tuned.

Basis for a disruptive innovation after CM Christensen

In the book “The Innovator’s Dilemma” by Clayton M. Christensen, the question is discussed why some innovations tend to be disruptive, meaning that well established companies in a branch are not able to go along a changing market situation and leaving niche which is growing to become a full scaled marked open for young competitors which will create and then live up to the demand. Christensen highlights two main factors as important for any disruptive technology. Keep in mind that these two factors are only necessary conditions, not sufficient conditions. The first condition is the simplicity of the product. The simplicity allows a company with low expertise on a certain field to create a low-cost product. Products of well-established companies have often gone through extensive supportive innovation cycles in which they have been optimized and fine-tuned and it would be impossible for new comers to compete with products of this order of sophistication. The second factor is the requirement of the product to be a worse product in some aspects compared to the products of the well established companies. This ensures, that the established company will not try to compete with the product of the newcomer in its early stage, since the customers of the company would not accept a product of lower standards and if they would, the product would cannibalize the high-end products of the established company.

Examples of disruptive innovations

There are many examples for this process. The flash drive that replaced the normal hard disks by being very “simple” (purely electronic opposed to the magnetic mechanical and electronic conventional hard disks) but they were initially only used in a very small set of low-end applications, fulfilling both criteria.

The iPad is a second example, a personal computer, that uses long established easy technology (the capacitive touchscreen was invented 1973 and has been used since then, source: CERNCourier) but removes essential parts of a normal personal computer experience like a mouse keyboard and slots to connect external devices, being a simple and “worse” product that many of the established companies did not want to copy until it was to late.

A more recent example for a disruptive technology is Tesla*. It is a worse product as for the inconvenience of low range, the hassle of charging, etc. and it uses very simple technology that has been around for a long time. Even now that established car manufacturers have started to compete with Tesla, Tesla remains disruptive, as it can allow itself to delivery very poor build quality of the car to a high-end customer (e.g. the gap dimensions in the coachwork are huge, poor air-sealing, closing the door sounds like kicking a plastic trash can, instead of the nice dull bump of a mid-range to high range conventional car (they have sound engineers just for that) and general bad plastic haptic) and thus have more money to cram a lot of expensive batteries, thus having the longest drive range, that other car manufacturers cannot afford with their high build quality. This is not to say, that Tesla will be successful on the long run or that in general the shift to electric cars is desirable for society. But which is a whole different topic for another time.

* = The author holds stakes in a financial product that is affected by the development of the Tesla share.

Analysis of disruptiveness of “The Box”

Simplicity

The Box fails the first of Christensen’s main criteria for a disruptive technology: The simplicity of the product. It is the complete opposite of the criterion: having a build-in scale, a E-Ink display, a camera on the inside, humidity sensor, temperature sensor, GPS, a 4G module. In short lot’s and lot’s of fancy technology. It is much more complex than the current established product (cardboard) meaning that a well established company with more resources and expertise could do a way better job to create a more competitive version of it.

Being a worse product

This criteria is definitely met by “The Box”: from the viewpoint of the average customer that receives a lot more packages than they send off in return, the box is the worse product. For the time being most receivers do not have to pay – or at least they are not aware of it – for the extra amount of trash that they produce through cardboard packaging. Meaning that it is very convenient for the customer to dispose the cardboard. LivingPackets on the other hand means that the receiver of a package would have to store the package in his home. Even though the package is foldable and takes up little space, it still has to be stored some place and the receiver has to get rid of it by carrying it to a store or handing it to the postmen whenever they bring a new package. Source, archive of source. On top of that, an end consumer would never use the Box during the establishment of the product because even though they have the box in their possession (not in their ownership) they would need to pay 2 euros on top of the postage in order to use it and thus much rather use an old cardboard box from a preceding other shipping.

Conclusion

Measured with the conditions of the inventor’s dilemma by Christensen, The Box by LivingPackets will probably not be a disruptive innovation. But the company might be successful even though or set some impulses for supportive innovations in established companies or pave the way for future disruptive technologies.

4 thoughts on “Is “The Box” a disruptive innovation?

  1. Who cares if The Box is “disruptive” or not? Don’t you see the huge potential of this fantastic product :-)? We are 1000s of enthusiastic Sharing Angels around the world contributing EVERY WEEK! (ask LivingPackets!) and The Box has been elected at the CES 2020 in Las Vegas “THE TECHNOLOGY WITH THE HIGHEST POTENTIAL TO CHANGE THE WORLD”. All these international journalists are stupid?
    Just like the iPhone (far more complex than a simple mobile phone – thus not “disruptive”?), a solid intelligent reusable packaging like The Box is much MORE SIMPLE TO USE for shipping, returning and reusing than any waste packaging filling our garbage and destroying our planet. Much safer than cardboards, customers get full control (the App is the remote control) at no additional cost. JUST BY PUSHING A BUTTON! You can even change your address or delivery time during delivery! (for ex. when you are at home! 🙂
    In addition, Europe just decided that until 2030 all packaging should be reusable. Therefore we don’t care if The Box is disruptive or not: WE JUST WANT IT :-).
    Dear Nutzniesser, if you wish that many 1000s of us, as Sharing Angels around the world, share your blog, maybe you should try to understand why we all contribute … or even better: benefit yourself of this absolutely necessary evolution for our planet. In 2 -3 months, as soon as the mass production starts( ?), you will be proven wrong. Afterward everybody is more clever :-), but it will be too late for you (and for your blog). To last and multiply critics must be credible and useful, and solid critics are needed: make yourself a favor: join us, take advantage of it and please stay critical! 🙂 … you will have the best of both worlds:. a credible blog that we all follow and a huge return for yourself :-).

    • Dear Michael
      1) A innovation can conquer a market without being innovative. I thought that I made that clear in the last part. So nothing to worry about for your product.
      2) You are distorting the reality. The European Commission decided that packaging should be “reusable OR RECYCLABLE”. Source.Get your facts straight. All cardboard boxes that are currently used are recyclable. Many of them even already are made up off recycled wood pulp. And if you just read the headline you would now that “single use-plastics” shall be reduced. And the filling material can be made up off recyclable plastic. Polystyrol already is recyclable, the rest can be made recyclable. The impact on the packaging industry is minimal and it is not at all evident that LivingPackets will benefit from this new rule.
      3) Are you trying to appeal to my narcissism by offering me followers for my blog? Interesting. I’d rather stick with my incredible blog than downgrade to a credible one. But thanks for the offer.

  2. Hi,

    just for your information: “Michael Forpac” is “Pierre-Alain Cotte” (PAC), one of the founds of the Cotte Group, Shareholder of LivingPackets SA and all it’s sibling companies.

    As one of the current, but soon resigning employee at LP, I can confirm this by multiple sources. His writing style is unique, and is almost the same from internal emails. Regarding the ramp up of production of “The BOX” there is done nothing near for production readiness. Dates are artificially delayed, the inner management is incapable, narcissistic, and burns people every month. The situation at LP is highly toxic and advances are rarely made. PAC rules like a tyrant over the decisions made, even though most of them are irrational, stubborn anf simply out of place. I understand that all if this are just unproven claims, but I personally fear repercussions would I speak out publicly. I’m currently working together with a few other colleagues to gather undeniable evidence, that LP is conducting money laundering at a large scale. If proof has been finally assembled, it will be released to the public.

  3. Dear forPAC.

    Sure this analysis might have it’s limits in terms of predictability. But it is nevertheless a valid indicator.

    To put it as bluntly as possible: there are a few obvious logical fallacies in your statements. Also you seem to let yourself govern by pride by utilizing emotional linguistics. I can strongly recommend to learn about cognitive biases and how they affect our judgement most of the time.

    It can be very rewarding to successfully identify and deconstruct at least some of the biases that govern our mind, since it serves intellectual honesty. Also: the first step is to realize that there is always something to learn about oneself. No matter who you are, what you have achieved, how old you are, and so on.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overconfidence_effect
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
    In general: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

    Count of St. Germain

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