The most important and influential companies are those that disrupt their industries. The ones which upend long existing and encrusted structures, fundamentally rethink how things are done and make us stop in our tracks.
Tesla did this for the car industry. Their electric vehicle not only forced a whole industry to rethink their choice of engine but also the very way we see a car (Tesla’s cars are famously compared to “smartphones on wheels” for their ability to be updated over the air to gain new features).
AirBnB, Uber, Apple’s iPhone… All examples for massively disruptive forces in their respective industries.
My colleague David Roberts nails it when he defines the essence of disruption as:
Doing new things that make the old things obsolete.
This simple statement is a perfect starting point for you to figure out your very own disruption story: What are the new things you can do, which make the old things in your industry obsolete? Not just better — but obsolete?