This is What Digital Disruption Looks Like

The world is changing, the alignment of the planets through SMACT (Social, Mobile Analytic, Cloud and Internet of Things) is changing the way we live and work.

One such way the world is changing is through the Sharing Economy. Uber has no Taxis, AirBnB has no hotel. The first question a VC will ask you now is “What industry are you going to kill?”

What is Driving this?

There are four main drivers for this and they are being driven by you, the consumer.

As customers, we now have high expectations of our customer experience. Why when I call an insurance company why do I have to give them my post code (Zip code) three times?

The way we interact with customers has changed. I now want to interact with companies on Twitter and Social Media, to the lesser extent on the web.

We have an expectation that at work and when we interact with brands our user experience (UX) is similar to what we have at home and on mobile. Good example, would be the ease of use we get from Facebook or Amazon. Why would I want to go to work and use some “green screen” mainframe system.

I have a belief that somewhere in the world there is a Millennial sitting creating an App that will destroy my business. We therefore, have to remain alert and agile to change and disruption. Better still, drive it.

Does That mean I need to be in some Fancy Start-up?

In 2002, Blockbuster had a market capitalization of $5 Billion. Netflix started in 1997, their unique selling point (USP) was to be more agile than Blockbuster. In 2007, their CEO, Reed Hastings, decided to start a video streaming service. At that time, cable was not highly used in the US, but the CEO had seen the “writing on the flatsceen”. Netflix moved from cheaper competitor to Digital Disruptor.

Why would you have a DVD collection of 1,000s, when you can (store them in the cloud) and stream them over the internet.

I remember a futurist saying he was selling all his worldly goods, as it saved him storing them. If he ever wanted to use of of his possessions all he had to do was buy them back on eBay.