Misselling Disruption

As the title suggests, the objective of the article is to question and debunk some of the hype around disruption talk. With disruption talk, I am referring to the deluge of literature and noise around economic and social impact of technology that extrapolates and exaggerates the real change. 

Agreeably, over last few years disruption as a word has acquired serious currency as a marketing tool, policy input as well as strategic change to individuals and corporations. A boring slide in corporate presentation on competitive risk, if supplemented with that magical word, is enough to make people stay alert and maybe cringe. 

The economic and emotional impact of disruption is well known – it can put countries, corporations, small enterprises and individuals in a state of scare, or wariness; and I am not touching upon automation, or artificial intelligence, but scenario of unemployment, going out of business and social unrest.

As we know, fear sells faster than hope; a stampede is an example why things get worse faster than people imagine.

An illustration - banking industry is a large consumer of technology for its operations, for its client servicing, controls and efficiencies; regulatory changes at home and elsewhere, continues to rock the boat. For the amount of changes, "disruption" can be run as an independent function, like operations or, finance. The industry labors its way through a big divide emerging between individual and corporate client services; for example more faceless, analytics focused, technology enabled delivery platforms for consumer, while a more discerning and complex corporate client who can supplement bank with a rapidly improving public market for its needs.

Retail industry has its woes with click and brick, or click and click.

Hence, call it change or disruption, it is a pervasive and to a large extent irreversible development. It is not a new animal. However, you can debate, analyse or, overanalyse about its current and future impact as much your imagination may permit and what you want to achieve with it.

In my view, disruption or, disruptive technologies – is a participative opportunity, to governments, individuals, social institutions and companies.

It is not what technology can make me jobless, but what I can do with technology to be more productive and serve my professional, personal and social objectives better. In a larger canvas, we live with enough situations, or problems that need to be solved, and that is a responsibility on people and governments who have the access, resources and common sense intelligence.

Before we break into a man versus machine debate, there are enough man versus man, and man versus nature issues. Hence, the survival theme cannot be limited to our jobs and government to taxes, but factor how we are performing to serve our children’s future, responsibly use our resources, tie our prosperity with the underserved and be healthier societies, economically and spiritually.

Aspirations or, goals structured with these objectives may have technology as enabler, and disruption as source of positive change.

In making this point, I dint feel the need to quote internet penetration, smartphone ownership, digital disruptions and associate any value judgment with it.

It is just the progression of life; we need the farmer as much as the smartphone manufacturer on both ends of technology.

The email made postmen jobless, and I think smarter.

Hence, next time someone scares you with the disruption hyper-talk, turn around and ask – “How do I ride it?” or, believe in it.