Don’t Be Afraid of Disruption
By leadership author and keynote speaker Ross Shafer
Everybody seems to be talking about Disruption these days. But what does it mean and how does it affect you? Hi everybody, I’m Ross Shafer and I want to thank you for finding the Relevant Leaders Club where each week I post a new video to help you grow your career or your business. Today I want to talk about disruption. What is disruption exactly? Some people think disruption is another word for change, but it’s not. Change is disruption’s little brother. From the mergers and acquisitions I see, disruption is more like a major earthquake than the tiny aftershock caused by change. For me, the definition of a business disruption is when an industry is flipped on its head so violently that it threatens the very existence of a legacy company.
Microsoft disrupted IBM when it made personal computing available to everyone. FedEx overnight delivery was disrupted when the broadband Internet made it possible to email large documents within seconds. Alternative energy sources, like solar, have made it possible for people to be energy independent rather than buy electricity from a power company. In the medical industry, genome-testing costs have dropped from billions to a few thousand and of course robotic surgical equipment has already revolutionized cross-continent surgeries. 3-D printing has disrupted almost every manufacturing industry; with the right 3d printer you can get a software template and print everything from auto parts to showerheads. On-demand TV and movies have disrupted the traditional TV broadcast model and created BING watching a season in two days. Even the world of finance has been disrupted. Bitcoin invented a brand new virtual currency for purchasing good and services. Wikipedia disrupted the Encyclopedia Britannica books by making a digital encyclopedia where anybody could contribute or update 24/7/365. The photography industry had depended upon developing film for 110 years before digital photography up-ended the entire model. Kodak tanked, 800 Fotomats closed, and now the camera in your smart phone has higher resolution than a studio portrait camera 10 years ago. Now of course, you can share your pictures anywhere in the world from your smart device. Has the photo industry been decimated? Not by the amount of pictures taken today. In the year 2000 there were about 85 million physical pictures in existence. Today, the library of Congress estimates that there are more than 12 trillion pictures in existence… most of them are selfies of you. So photography has certainly been disrupted, but the industry is on fire! Disruption in EVERY industry is inevitable; innovation is accelerating. So, where does that leave you? You have two choices: (1) You can notice that a disruption is taking place in your industry and embrace it while your competitors are desperately trying to cling the past or (2) YOU become a disruptor. You figure out how your industry COULD change and YOU lead the charge. I say be a disruptor before somebody disrupts for you because I guarantee you, outside of your walls, there is a small start-up who is doing one-armed push-ups in the corner trying to steal your business. You don’t want to get caught with your market share down.
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