Future Here Now: Disrupt...but not like that.
Future Here Now: Disrupt...but not like that.
Try It On
Note: I am on a technical visit to rural Mississippi this week with IEDC. Some emails may be delayed.
This week, we’ll be focusing on the question of disruption — when it’s needed, when it’s helpful, when it’s not, and when it’s downright hurtful. There’s a school of thought that says that disruption, especially technology-driven disruption, is a long-term good that advances growth and economic progress, while we all also know people and communities and businesses that view any kind of change as an existential threat.
Like most issues in the emerging Fusion Era, this question is more a yes-and than the either-or that our Industrial Era minds might assume. The recent challenges at Twitter and Silicon Valley Bank and others point to both the incredible catalyst of groundbreaking approaches, and the very real hurt and damange that can come about as the result. One does not negate or excuse the other, and neither one in exclusion will enable prosperity in an economy where both innovation and the full inclusion of the people needed to create innovations will be needed
To help us get our heads around this multi dimensional challenge - and the mindset shift it requires of us, try this thought experiment:
Identify an innovation that has happened in your lifetime - one where you have personal experience with and without that innovation. For example, I might think of dusting furniture. When I was a kid, one of my chores was to use spray-on polish and an old T-shirt scrap to wipe down all of the wood furniture. Today, I use a Swiffer duster on a handle.
Identify a few ways that the innovation made your life better. For me, that’s easy - no weird fumes, no nasty rags to wash, no streaks, no random leftover dust and fuzz piles.
Identify a few ways in which the innovation might create new challenges. In my example, the Swiffer costs a whole lot more per dusting than my childhood tools. And I have a pang of guilt every time I throw away a non-recyclable Swiffer. Plus, my furniture just isn’t as shiny as I remember it in my parents’ house.
When we’re talking about dusting, none of that sounds revelatory. But that’s kind of the point.
Many of us tend to have one of two reactions to innovations. We may say, “This is the best thing ever” and fail to think critically about the impacts (I didn’t really think about my Swiffer use implications until I wrote #3 above). Or we shy away from the strange and unfamilar and stick with our rags and Endust.
Neither is inherently right or wrong, but many of us have been taught to perceive these choices as right or wrong, depending on what we were brought up with. And one of the biggest challenges that we face as a result of that framing is that we too easily fail to think in terms of choices and managing impacts, instead of either-or. Tomorrow, we will dig deeper into how that plays out in our businesses and communities.
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