Turning Disruption Into Opportunity

Speaking at NACD was a highlight of my year, as the audience was forward-thinking, eager to learn, and willing to grapple with tough questions in order to reach good answers. The discussions after my talk were almost as much fun as the talk itself, and there was significant appetite for a reference sheet to some of the bigger ideas I’d outlined. I hope that the summary pulled together here will prove helpful, and I welcome remarks, insights, or questions about any of it!

Disruptive trends in technology, culture, and business are converging. That convergence is an opportunity for businesses that recognize how to proceed. 

Code: Technology is cheaper, faster, and better than ever before. 

From software toolkits to education outlets, cloud computing to open-source big-data structures, there have never been so many ways for a motivated player to exert so much leverage so rapidly. Competitive advantages and resources that once belonged exclusively to large companies are increasingly not just accessible but freely available. In many cases, these platforms even invert such advantages—meaning that individuals who are part of porous, open groups are able to deploy better solutions faster than corporate counterparts by leveraging their communities. And all at low to no cost.

President Obama’s first campaign for the White House is a prime example of this phenomenon: he hired data specialists who used a simple method to computationally test different versions of his website in order to see which ones were generating more donations. Using this approach, he exceeded his projections by an additional 4 million e-mail addresses, a click-through rate of 140 percent, and $75 million more than was expected.

Culture: Transparency, meritocracy, and a willingness to disrupt anything characterize the new technology (and business) marketplace. 

The age of playing by the rules—any rules—has largely gone by the wayside. When it’s possible to conduct corporate inversion online in under 20 minutes using a digital toolkit provided by a foreign nation state, it’s clear the playing field has changed. This is exactly what Estonia’s new “E-Estonia” initiative—which grants corporations a type of citizenship supported by cryptographically backed authentication—has been accused of enabling.

The people developing new solutions and creating new technologies take for granted an entirely different set of social (and moral) norms, which have no respect for the way your business is currently structured.

Competition: An exploding black market and a global tipping point that will occur when the remaining two-thirds of the planet come online over the next five years herald an incipient tidal wave of strange new competitors. 

If you think the Internet has been disruptive during the past 20 years, you haven’t seen anything yet. The motivations and expectations of people completely new to technology differ from those of people who have already internalized it. Much like the toddler who doesn’t know what to do with a computer mouse and thinks a computer screen is broken when he can’t swipe it, new users of innovative technologies will have different expectations for what your company should provide. When you mix in a booming black market and a surging cascade of disruptive technologies—everything from drones to 3-D printing to dial-your-own genomics—you have a strange new world indeed…and one coming at you very, very quickly.

ACTION ITEMS: There’s good news in all this. You can compete just as well—if not better—by recognizing that the game has changed and adapting to the new rules.

1) Experiment, experiment, experiment.

It’s faster, cheaper, and easier than ever before to invent, test, and iterate. It’s what your competitors (and they are legion) are doing—especially the outlier startups that you so fear will flip your market as Uber did the medallion cab industry’s. The good news? You can do exactly the same thing. Even better, once you do, you already have a supply chain, established market, and deep resources to drive these new industries ahead of smaller first-time players.

What to ask your senior management: How are you implementing more agile and iterative development methodologies, and why?

2) Systematize culture change.

Empower your employees to act on your behalf. Legitimize risk. Reward insight. While this strategy looks good on paper, it is nearly impossible to execute, especially in highly efficient, competitive, and well-established organizations. Do it anyway, and you will find yourself at the helm of one of the most powerful entities in today’s market: A company that effectively innovates as a matter of course and knows how to build businesses and deploy products accordingly.

What to ask your senior management: How are we empowering our employees, at every level, to change the way our company operates? What evidence are we measuring that indicates this strategy is working?

3) Risk everything.

All business is about risk. But many companies have lost sight of the fact that this means not just mitigating risk but also embracing it. The emergence of new technology is confronting every industry with massive shifts that entail plenty of risk in the most negative sense. But the opposite is equally true, and it’s only by seizing the opportunities this time of change represents that you’ll emerge victorious. And who knows…you might even make the world a better place while you’re doing it.

What to ask your senior management: If you had to increase revenue by 25 percent this quarter, what would you try? Why aren’t we trying that?

Embracing Change

I live every day in the future, metabolizing the new technologies that are slipping over our event horizon and into daily life. It’s a scary place to be, but it’s also one that offers boundless hope. Times of change are enormous opportunities for advancement. Those of us who experiment voraciously, learn quickly, and adapt effectively will chart the course for how human commerce unfolds over the next two decades. Our way will become the “new normal” and possibly set standards that will shape lives for generations to come. It’s not a time without risk, but it’s also a chance to change the world. What more could you want?

Josh Klein advises, writes, and hacks systems. He wants to know what you think.

www.josh.is / josh@josh.is / @joshuaklein