On my flight over to Helsinki, I read the December issue of the Harvard Business Review, which had several articles focused on disruption. This is a topic I want to explore, especially the critical element that is often overlooked: the process of scaling disruption.
Disruption is a fickle influence. While we often talk about it being a binary event—you are either being disrupted or you aren’t—the truth is far more nuanced. True business disruption has a strong time component and almost always plays out over long periods.
From Nuance to Force: The Nature of Scaling Disruption
It is often the function of time that dictates if a new idea will actually shift the competitive landscape. An innovation only moves from a simple market nuance to a true disruptive force when it proves it can grow exponentially. The key to disruption materializing is its ability to scale.
Without scale, an idea remains a niche product or a minor influence. But the secret to scaling disruption is what allows an organization or a technology to fundamentally change how business is done and how industries compete.
A Case Study: The Rise of Digital
Tomorrow I’m speaking on the disruptive force of digital. Perhaps no single force has been as disruptive to so many sectors, and a big reason is its inherent ability to scale. Digital, by its very definition, scales almost infinitely. It’s also worth noting how much time this process took.
Time allows truly disruptive forces to build momentum. In the case of digital, its journey of scaling disruption began in one sector and grew from there:
- Music: Digital first gained traction here. The first real digital device outside of computers was the launch of the CD player at the 1981 CES.
- Print, Imaging, and Video: After successfully disrupting music, digital moved onto these more complex sectors. Each was successively more challenging, but time had allowed the technology to gain enough momentum to prove its disruptive potential.
When the Internet took hold in the late 1990s, it acted as a massive accelerator, allowing digital to scale more fully and, consequently, to achieve a level of scaling disruption that continues to transform our economy today.
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