“All the major coffee competitors have used the ?¢‚Ǩ?ìsame but cheaper strategy?¢‚Ǩ¬ù which never works against the ?¢‚Ǩ?ìreal thing…And unless they nail speed, they will never beat Starbucks.”

http://ries.typepad.com/ries_blog/

So do you think this is valid?

My personal take (and I like Dunkin’ Donuts coffee) is that I wonder if a more disruptive approach would work. ie rather than trying to expand with more Dunkin’ Donuts and a new campaign, whether the company would be better off creating an entirely new concept, independent of the current business, to capture new customers in a new market.

In tech land, this disruptive innovation approach is very common. Think of BlackBerry and i-Pod, which were both new ideas for a new product that was way off mainstream. In fact, incompatible with the mainstream. Now, they are both big, profitable units in the mainstream.

You will notice that McDonald’s did something like this with its Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurants: new idea, new management, independent product offering etc.

Anyway, I wrote up a more detailed analysis on this idea (as it applies to a different coffee and donut chain) at www.OnDisruption.com

The specific posting is:
http://ondisruption.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/03/donuts_and_blac.html

I welcome your feedback. Do you think any of this applies or am I crazy?