How to Prepare Now for What's Next

A Guide to Thriving in an Age of Disruption

Michael McQueen

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780730349846
• eBook ISBN: 9780730349853
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Disruption is changing the playing field – keep your successful business on top

Thriving businesses on top of their game are targets for disruption. But for savvy business owners and managers who understand the coming changes, the time to future-proof their successful companies is now. Following over a decade of research into future trends, business reinvention and disruptive innovation, author Michael McQueen presents How to Prepare Now for What's Next, a blueprint for top companies to thrive in turbulent times.

McQueen brings rare insight to the topic of business disruption. The book first explores the notion of disruption itself, and confirms that the term is much more than just guru-speak. The book outlines the four primary forms of disruption that McQueen sees playing out over the next 5-10 years, and quickly moves on to the in-depth tools, tips and techniques that healthy businesses will need to stay on top.

• Use a simple tool to assess just how vulnerable to disruption your company is
• Read case studies, research and trend reports that highlight real-world examples to complement the book's concepts
• Understand the four forms of disruption, namely widescale automation, empowered consumers, unconventional competition and emerging generations

• Apply the 9 keys to future-proof your business against disruption and make it impervious to change

The time to act is now for the businesses who want to keep their edge, and How to Prepare Now for What's Next is the guide to continue thriving.

PART I
THE FOUR KEY DISRUPTIONS

When Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen first introduced the notion of disruptive innovation in his 1997 bestseller The Innovator’s Dilemma, I wonder if he had any sense of just how profoundly impactful his ideas would become.

And yet while most of the leaders and organisations I work with understand the principles of disruption, many find themselves with little idea of how to predict or pre-empt the very disruptions that are looming large over their businesses and industries. What they often lack is a framework for making sense of the overwhelming barrage of changes they are facing.

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After all, it tends not to be linear, incremental or evolutionary; disruption is generally unpredictable, fundamental and revolutionary.

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Offering such a framework is my goal in part I of this book. By its very nature disruption is hard to forecast. After all, it tends not to be linear, incremental or evolutionary; disruption is generally unpredictable, fundamental and revolutionary.

So while predicting specific disruptions is difficult, identifying categories or patterns of disruption is far more useful. To this point, I’d suggest that the disruptions that will re-shape the landscape for businesses and organisations in the coming years will fall into one of four broad categories:

1. widescale automation
2. empowered consumers
3. unconventional competition
4. emerging generations.

Part I will feature a chapter dedicated to each of these four disruption categories that will highlight what is driving the change along with a look at how the disruption is set to play out in a range of industries.

In the words of London Business School professor Gary Hamel, ‘You can’t outrun the future if you don’t see it coming.’1 To Hamel’s point, the next four chapters are designed to give you the clearest possible picture of what is coming so you can get a head start.

Quick tip: Before you go any further, I’d highly recommend you flick to appendix A at the back of this book to complete a diagnostic tool called ‘The Disruptibility Index’. This revealing exercise will give you an objective measure of just how prone your organisation or business is to disruption at this very moment.

Your disruptibility score may well provide a helpful context for what you’ll learn in the coming chapters.

CHAPTER 1
WIDESCALE AUTOMATION

It’s not every day that a stocking manufacturer makes history — especially one with an unremarkable name like Ned.

And yet in the late 1770s, that’s exactly what happened. Incensed by the gradual encroachment of new automated knitting machines that threatened to put him out of work, a stocking maker named Ned decided to take matters into his own hands. Smashing a number of these time-saving contraptions to bits in a fit of rage, little did Ned know that he had just sown the seeds of a revolution.

Taking up the cause a few short years later, a group of English weavers and textile artisans banded together in a coordinated assault on the industrial age. Inspired by Ned’s act of defiance, this band of weavers and artisans was soon destroying a few hundred automated looms each month.

As you can imagine, the wealthy factory owners who owned the looms weren’t thrilled. Using their political sway in the British Parliament, these industrialists arranged for almost 15 000 soldiers to descend on the loom smashers to put an end to the destruction. They even managed to have a law passed making the breaking of weaving frames a crime punishable by death — a fairly extreme reaction even by early eighteenth century standards. Dozens of the ‘revolutionaries’ were executed or exiled to penal colonies such as Australia.

Things simmered down in the years that followed, the revolution crushed.²

You may not have heard of Ned but you likely know his surname and the movement he inspired. Ned Ludd and his band of self-described ‘Luddites’ have been widely ridiculed in the history books as backward, small-minded and anti-progress. Even to this day the term ‘Luddite’ is used to describe an individual who stubbornly and naively tries to hold back the march of technological advancement.

It’s important to note that progress was not the chief complaint of the Luddites. Instead, it was the power imbalance and erosion of dignity that automation technology led to that caused most frustration. In fact, Luddites were primarily concerned with negotiating the employment conditions that we take for granted today — you could almost call Luddites visionaries! The Luddites were not opposed to the idea of using machines to increase efficiency and productivity — they simply believed that some of the additional profits these efficiencies led to should go back to ensuring the welfare of workers in the form of pensions, minimum wages and safe working conditions.

Regardless of whether you agree with the Luddites’ behaviour or beliefs, it is the context of this uprising and its parallels with the modern age that offer an important lesson as we begin considering the automation-driven disruptions that lie ahead.

The late 1700s were, after all, a time of significant upheaval in the English textile business. War with France had resulted in trade barriers that had a huge commercial impact on British manufacturers. Added to this, fashions had rapidly changed and men no longer wore leggings — opting for trousers instead. All of this culminated in a time of enormous cost pressure for wealthy textile manufacturers. In this perfect storm of upheaval, steam-powered looms came onto the scene offering sizeable productivity and efficiency gains for mill owners. It was the perfect recipe for a clash.³

The attraction of automation

Looking at the context we find ourselves in currently, the parallels are striking. Facing mounting pressure to decrease costs and increase productivity, businesses today are again looking to widescale automation as the answer. What’s significant about this first of the four forms of disruption we explore in part I is that automation is both a result of change and a driver of it. In other words, many of the shifts we’ve seen in recent years have left businesses with little choice but to automate. However, this in turn is going to kick off a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• About the Author
• Introduction
• Part I: The Four Key Disruptions
• Part II: 9 Keys to Thriving in An Age of Disruption
• Conclusion
• Appendix A: The Disruptibility Index
• Appendix B: The Societal Implications of Automation
• Acknowledgements
• Index
• EULA