Innovation: Half empty? vs. Half full?
I remember the first time someone told me about Uber.
I was staying at a buddy’s house out of town, and my flight left really early the next morning. The dialogue went something like this:
Me: “Yikes not sure how I’m going to get to the airport tomorrow.”
Steve: “Just use Uber.”
Me: “What’s Ooober?”
Steve: “No, U-b-e-r. It’s an app that sends someone to pick you up immediately”.
Me: “Like in their personal car?”
Steve: “Yea”
Me: “Weird…………”
You get the point. I thought it was BIZARRE that someone would pick me up in their car at 4 am, and I could trust they wouldn’t rob me of my money. I consider myself a pretty innovative guy, but even this was a stretch for me.
Fast forward to now and well, you know the story.
Too often we hear about all the “disrupters”. Uber/Lyft/etc. And think, “Man the taxi industry REALLY dropped the ball on that one.” And then go about our daily lives as if our industry is immune from disruption.
The reality is quite the opposite. Let me repeat, YOUR INDUSTRY IS ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK! Someone, somewhere is working their ass off because of their frustrations with your industry... and they will disrupt you. I could recite countless stats about how Fortune 500’s are dropping like flies, and how consumers are changing, and how everything from politics to dating is being disrupted in a big way. Bottom line...your industry will be disrupted, and will continue to be disrupted at a more rapid rate.
I'm talking everything from politics to religion to streaming to restaurants to...you name it.
So there are two ways to look at this.
- Glass half empty? “Well, I can’t do anything about it so I’ll just wait until it happens and react.” Probably best to stick your head in the sand and worry.
- Glass half full. “Wow, how can I position me, my team, and my company to take advantage of these shifts?” A good place to start would be to look at every aspect of your business and test what has been the status quo. The whole, "If it ain't broke don't fix it" mantra is long gone. It's time to start saying, "OK that worked for the past 4 years, but can I test something against it to get better, faster, cheaper results?"
The “Uber, Netflix, etc” of your industry is coming. What are you doing to avoid being the taxi industry and Blockbuster?
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