Digital disruption can happen slowly and then all at once. We sometimes talk about how in the technology transformation game, winter is coming. The organizations that prepare will be ready to weather the disruptive change, while those who delay may get caught unprotected. Those in “traditional” industries may be susceptible to thinking that this change will not affect them soon or at all. Over the holidays, I saw a video that captured this danger fairly well http://www.9news.com/story/news/local/science/steve-spangler-science/2014/12/31/last-experiment-2014/21121461
A family in Colorado had set several unopened water bottles in a cooler in the frigid temperatures outside overnight. They opened the cooler in the morning to find the water cold but still in the liquid state. But, as they took each water bottle out and pounded it once on the countertop, the entire contents of the bottle became frozen very very quickly. It was an example of how physical motion on a supercooled liquid causes the liquid to freeze and crystallize almost instantly.
Technology disruption can produce the same phenomena on businesses and industries. What appears to be gradual change, such as slow customer adoption of new marketing, communication, self service and purchasing behaviors, at a certain turning point becomes something that the entire industry does. The new behaviors shift gradually, then very suddenly eclipse the old behaviors … and looking back you recognize the paradigm has shifted completely.
Kodak experienced this after the first iPhone’s release. Sales of paper-based photography slipped gradually then suddenly fell off the cliff. HMV’s sales of physical CDs cooled gradually, then froze in the wake of Napster and then iTunes’ rise.
Those businesses and industries are kind of like the water bottle in the cooler, it was probably getting chilly, but then it hit a point of no return and quite suddenly, the landscape changed. Who knows? If the leaders had been more perceptive and sensed that the cooling temperatures were more than seasonal, maybe they would have made the necessary changes.
Where will it happen next? Will the legal profession experience a sudden deep freeze when Artificial Intelligence performing e-discovery becomes the rule? Will self-service and the consumerization of insurance remake the fundamentals of the industry? Will 3-D printing and access to the means of production in the hands of individuals hit a threshold that undermines small manufacturing’s value proposition?
Business leaders, if you can’t sense the cooling as it’s coming, how on earth will you be able to avoid the freeze? Winter is coming, leaders. Adapt or your company could become frozen in time.