Creative Self-Disruption

New businesses emerge and expand, disrupting established businesses with unprecedented speed: “companies like Airbnb, Amazon, Apple, and Uber exemplify a different kind of transformation: agile players invade other, seemingly unrelated industries and brilliantly exploit huge but previously unseen opportunities,” writes economist Mohamed A. El-Erian for Project Syndicate. “Central to these companies’ success has been their understanding of a fundamental trend affecting nearly all industries: individual empowerment through the Internet, app technology, digitalization, and social media.” Such companies study consumer preferences for speed, affordability, safety, convenience, customization and more – and then develop new processes and offer substitute products and services. Auto manufacturers could be ahead of other industries in tailoring their products for the new sharing economy, he suggests. In the volatile economy, El-Erian concludes that companies can adapt by paying close attention to consumer needs, the messages buried in collected data, and the micro-forces in markets and industries that present opportunity. – YaleGlobal