Disrupt, or Get Ready To Be Disrupted

The future has two faces. One of them is full of opportunities and the other full of perils. Between today and then there’s not much time anymore, because the future is actually happening right now. And if we want to stay relevant, we urgently need to decide which road we want to take. At least the one that will take us in the direction to the opportunities is mined with uncertainties and complexities, which makes it even more confusing. And while thinking about this future and its potential opportunities, one thing is for sure, we need to disrupt or get ready to be disrupted.

In the next 14 years, 3 billion poor people will be joining the middle class. Middle class spending will raise up to $56 trillion by 2030. These 3 billion people will create markets and opportunities that don’t even exist today. Many companies see them as potential customers, but they, together with many others, will disrupt everything we know in even more dramatic ways that we have experienced in the past years.

If we think that it is impossible to catch up with the existing pace of change and innovation, we really haven’t seen anything yet. The growing middle class, with access to more information, technology and opportunities, will create and innovate at a speed that we can’t even imagine. New companies will emerge, new markets will be created, new killer apps will be designed and, ultimately, everything will be different.

But, today, there are companies and people that keep thinking about the future as if the pace of change is going to be the same that we are experiencing right now. Not only are they absolutely wrong, but they are missing entire possibilities by a large extent. In reality, the pace of change is not linear anymore, but exponential. And that means that the need for agility, adaption, flexibility and creativity is more critical today than it has ever been.

It is precisely the lack of some of those skills the reason why many companies will fail and die hard, and people will become continually less valuable in the marketplace. These companies and people are not adapting and changing their mindsets and I think they haven’ even noticed that they will be disrupted sooner rather than later.

A study from the John M. Olin School of Business at Washington University estimates that 40 percent of today's Fortune 500 companies on the S&P 500 will no longer exist in 10 years. Who is going to fill the gaps of the services and products that those companies provide? They will all be replaced by the kind of innovations that don’t exist yet, but that are being worked out right now by those who are trying to keep up with the pace of change. They are the ones disrupting and learning to create and add value at levels that we can’t even fathom.

Companies and people that don’t adapt their culture, their style and their mindsets are doomed to fail badly and die. They will be disrupted by the thousands of other companies and other people that are competing with them, whether they know it or not. Unfortunately, some companies and people that have come a long way and succeeded are too stubborn to see that the capabilities that made them successful in the past are already obsolete. Not surprisingly, some of the biggest innovators of the last half of the 20th century are disappearing or already disappeared (Nokia, Kodak, Polaroid).

The big question here is how do we constantly change our mindsets to adapt to the times of exponential change that we are living in? What are we doing to seek or create the opportunities to add the new skills that will be needed in the future? How are we nurturing our mindsets to get ready to disrupt or create entire new markets?

The ability to disrupt depends to a large extent on our capacity to:

• Be curious and observe what is going in the world without preconceptions
• Don’t get for granted what we know or do. Most likely, everything we know how to do today is either obsolete, or will become so very soon
• Be open-minded as to learn from all experiences, either failures or successes. They both have great lessons to teach us
• Add and create values at levels never expected before
• Network with the most diverse communities we can think of. People from different countries, companies, industries and professions. And learn from and with them as much as we can
• Promote collision of ideas. The best innovations don’t come from within one specific field, but from the combination of various ideas, skills and capabilities

Are you preparing yourself to disrupt, or be disrupted?

Follow me on Twitter: @erubio_p
Visit my blog: www.innovationdev.org

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About the Author: Enrique Rubio is an Electronic Engineer and a Fulbright scholar with an Executive Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Syracuse University. Enrique is passionate about leadership, business and social entrepreneurship, curiosity, creativity and innovation. He is a blogger and podcaster, and also a competitive ultrarunner. Visit the blog: Innovation for Development and Podcast. Click here to follow Enrique on Twitter. 

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