Canva’s Dilemma
Canva Visual Worksuite marks the end of Canva’s blue ocean and a farewell to its disruptive innovation roots.
Canva’s launch of what it has branded ‘the Visual Worksuite’ marks the end of the beginning for Canva.
Since its start in 2013, the design app startup has grown to amass over 85 million users.
Putting that in perspective, the current population of Canva users is 3.27x the current population of the country Canva is based in (Australia, pop. ~26million).
Canva the app, fit neatly into what the late Clayton Christensen‘s framework of ‘disruptive innovation’.
First and foremost, it competed with non-consumption.
Canva was a design tool for people who were not designers.
Canva’s job was to help people, who didn’t know what they were doing, to design something adequate that, with a little help from the Ikea effect, users could be proud of.
The Canva app was free to use and rather than charging for time (subscription model) or for software (licence model), Canva charged for design, selling users premium images and elements to use in their Canva-based works for $1 each.
