Be Disruptive!

Technological breakthroughs have a way of completely upending the way we live—and that includes the business world, too. The most successful businesses of the next century—and the fastest growing sectors—won’t be the same as the ones from the past century. Instead, the most successful entrepreneurs will be those who identify changes and come up with great new ideas that take advantage of those shifts.

A century ago, technology upended the landscape, and provided opportunities for innovate small businesses to climb to the top of the ladder. The telephone, the automobile, electrification, stainless steel, the radio—these things proved a death knell to many old, established businesses that didn’t know how to operate in the brave new world, while offering exciting growth for forward-thinking entrepreneurs. Another half-century later, television and other developments changed things again.

Now we’re entering another era of rapid change. In the Wall Street Journal this week, Mark Mills and Julio Ottino, both highly respected figures in the fields of science and engineering, offered up what they see as the three major innovations of this decade, things that will transform the economy as much as the developments described above.

Their picks?

• Big Data. They are excited about the possibilities offered by cloud computing, combining the resources of thousands of data centers to enhance both power and storage. Information can be made available anywhere, from any machine; and at the same time, complex problems that would completely weigh down a single machine can be shared among a multitude of processors, resulting in more detailed, accurate, and precise analysis.
• Smart Manufacturing. Henry Ford changed the manufacturing world with mass production, but scientists are changing it again with newfound ways to manipulate materials at the most basic, molecular level.
• Wireless Communications. This is an innovation that has been growing exponentially around the globe. Anyone, anywhere on the planet, can communicate instantaneously with anyone else, anywhere else. This is a development, spread among billions of people, that can cause rapid societal change while also representing great opportunity for anyone, not just established players.

And while those are the three developments that they highlight, I would bet that there will be other things that even they don’t see! Change comes rapidly, but it also comes from unexpected places. Remember, 50 years ago, futurists thought we’d have flying cars by now, but they never anticipated the growth of the internet and wireless technology.

The small business entrepreneurs that I work with every day, spread all over the country, will be the leaders when it comes to implementing these innovative technologies. Rapid and constant change is the hallmark of small business, where it just takes one visionary individual to make a difference.

At the largest, seemingly most powerful corporations, any individual with vision is immediately pitted against large committees and interests resistant to change, and innovations will inevitably be slowed to a pace that disrupts as few things as possible—and produces minimal impact.

Innovation is naturally disruptive—that’s the way it works! Older, obsolete methods will fall away, but they’ll be replaced by things that improve our quality of life.

Look for ways that you can take advantage of the major developments in our society, and don’t limit yourself to just those ones that everybody else is talking about! In this country, it doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from—all it takes is a great idea to change the world.