Introduce yourself!
My name is David Watemberg, I’m 25 years old, and I’m the Sales Manager of the international department at SOS Furniture.

What are the main principles of disruptive design in commercial spaces?
I think it’s important to contextualize them in terms of how we would apply disruptive design to our projects. For us as a company, Disruptive Design has led us to embrace complexity, create proposals that foster changes to make the world work better for all of us, and adapt to future ways of living. Our principles and foundations in this case would be as follows: Everything is interconnected in one way or another. Change is constant. The future is undefined. Every change must be sustainable. The challenge is part of the reward. Change is iterative.

How can disruptive design improve the customer experience in physical stores?
We need to develop a deeper understanding of the interdependence we have with nature and create a mindset that allows us to understand how the world works. This leads us to create spaces that interact with our customers directly and differently than they are used to, pushing them out of their comfort zone and making them evaluate the benefits that implementing this brings to their collaborators in their projects. In some cases, leading to improvements in their physical and mental health that were not previously considered at the time of purchasing our products.

What are some notable examples of companies that have successfully implemented disruptive design in their establishments?
One of the examples we like and always analyze how to implement disruptive design is IKEA, a global reference in furniture sales. Ikea changed the customer experience cycle in a unique way. Founded by Ingvar Kamprad in 1943, it is the world’s largest furniture company. The chain of mega furniture stores at good prices managed to be disruptive by attacking the consumer’s buying cycle. “Traditionally, the buying cycle up to that point in that market was: you went to the store, chose a piece of furniture, bought it and ordered it or had it made, it was delivered to your home after a while, and it was installed for you.

IKEA breaks that experience cycle by creating complete display spaces, ready for customers to buy. Giving the customer the opportunity to visualize the complete environment they would be acquiring and emphasizing a concept called value innovation. Ikea managed to design an interesting experience around the purchase, where the consumer organizes their visit to the store as if it were a trip or an excursion. As Kamprad said, “Happiness is being on the journey”.

What challenges do designers face when incorporating disruptive elements into traditional commercial spaces?
The first and strongest of all is rejection. No one likes to leave their comfort zone; another very common one is the fear or concern of not knowing where we are heading with that change, which often leads us to perceive the change only when we dislike the direction we are moving in and, therefore, we have all kinds of cognitive biases that reduce our ability to see where that change is coming from and where it is going. As a result, problems arise, sometimes very obvious and sometimes more subtle and omnipresent. It helps to remember that we are all subject to a constant state of change and that the world also changes around us. We have the power and the ability to participate in that change through our actions and, unfortunately, inactions that make the world around us sicker and sicker.

What is the potential impact of disruptive design on customer loyalty and increased sales?
The numbers and names really speak for themselves: Uber, Netflix, Google, Amazon, Tesla Motors, Apple. They are examples of how being disruptive achieves great changes and loyalty from customers. Applying this in our business and in the projects we develop leads us to understand directly that our need to sell furniture as we have done in the last 30 years is surely changing and will change much more in the coming years. The concept of the office has changed a lot from those times when the office was a space with a desk, only contemplated for business, to what we have today, which is the evolution of a workplace as if it were or provided the same experience as being at home, with its comforts and with all the technological access we have. As we make our customers more comfortable and at ease with this constant change, they will surely feel it and want to implement it in each of the spaces where they live daily.

Do you have any final statements and opinions on the topic?
As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus (500 BC) said, “the only constant in life is change”. Change is a constantly moving universal force that impacts everything we see and do, from the weather to our decisions and experiences. Change constantly exerts forces on us and the world around us. However, we (humans) have a predisposition to avoid such changes because, sometimes, it can be uncomfortable, generally perceived as the loss of something else, which for us as a company makes us see an incredible opportunity to be agents of change and lead the disruptive trend in our market.