Thriving In Times of Epic Disruption

Todd Henry [00:00:02]:

Every era of human history has been marked by disruption. Fire, the printing press, the steam engine, electricity, the microchip. Each ushered in profound transformation, not only in how people lived and worked, but also in how they thought about what was possible. And in every case, what seemed at first like chaos eventually revealed itself to be the fertile ground for reinvention. We're living in one of those moments where right now, everywhere you look, healthcare, finance, education, transportation, entertainment, the old rules are breaking down. Technologies like artificial intelligence, renewable energy, and biotechnology are advancing so rapidly that it feels like the very ground beneath us is shifting. What worked yesterday may not work tomorrow. Probably won't.

Todd Henry [00:00:48]:

That's both exhilarating and terrifying. So the temptation, when faced with disruption, is either to resist it, to cling tightly to what we know, or to chase it blindly, assuming that anything new must automatically be better. But the truth, as history has shown us, is much more nuanced. Disruption doesn't reward rigidity and comfort, but it also doesn't automatically crown the first mover. Instead, it favors those who can balance imagination with discipline, the leaders and teams willing to experiment, adapt and learn faster than the world around them changes. One of the key challenges of disruption is that it rarely announces itself politely. It often looks small, insignificant, or even laughable in the beginning. I mean, think about Netflix mailing DVDs while Blockbuster dominated Friday night.

Todd Henry [00:01:38]:

Or Airbnb, starting with air mattresses in a San Francisco apartment. Or Tesla producing expensive electric sports cars when the market for EVs barely even existed. What begins as fringe or foolish often becomes the new mainstream. So the question for each of us, whether we lead teams, companies, or simply our own career, is this. How do we recognize the difference between noise and signal, between passing fads and truly epic disruptions? And once we recognize them, how do we respond? With courage rather than fear. With creativity rather than panic. There are a few principles worth keeping in mind. First of all, disruption is not just about technology.

Todd Henry [00:02:21]:

It's about behavior. A new product or service only matters if it changes how people act, how they spend their time, their money, and their attention. Second, disruption is rarely a single event. It's a process. It unfolds in waves, often taking longer to materialize than we expect, but moving faster than we're prepared once it gathers momentum. And third, disruption isn't something to survive. It's something to harness. It creates opportunities for those willing to see differently and move decisively.

Todd Henry [00:02:53]:

That's why I'm excited about today's conversation. It's with Scott Anthony. He has spent years studying the patterns of innovation, the dynamics of change, and the practices of companies that not only weather disruption, but thrive in it. His new book is called Epic Disruptions, and it offers a roadmap for how to navigate this turbulent landscape with clarity and courage. So before we dive into the interview, I invite you to pause and reflect. Where are the epic disruptions in your world right now, in your industry, in your job, even in your life? Which ones are you ignoring because they seem small? Which ones are you overestimating because they seem flashy? But most importantly, how can you position yourself not just to react, but to lead through the disruption? This is Daily Creative. Since 2005, we served up weekly tips to help you be brave, focused and brilliant every day. My name is Todd Henry.

Todd Henry [00:03:49]:

Welcome to the.

Scott Anthony [00:03:54]:

I think getting the terms right is absolutely critical. So a disruptive innovation changes the game and drives explosive growth.

Todd Henry [00:04:02]:

Again, that's Scott Anthony, author of the new book Epic Disruptions.

Scott Anthony [00:04:05]:

And let me make it real just by providing an example. So my father was born in 1947. The year he was born, there was one computer in the world. It weighed 30 tons. It was about 1800 square feet. I was born in 1975. That year, Digital Equipment Corporation sold 30,000 computers. They're still pretty big, about 1600 pounds, but they're a lot smaller than they were before in many more places.

Scott Anthony [00:04:31]:

The year my daughter Holly was born, in 2007, there were 271 million computers sold. And of course, that was the year this, the Apple iPhone was introduced. Now there are billions of computers that are in every nook and cranny of the world. This is disruptive innovation, taking things that were complicated, that did require deep expertise, that were expensive, making them simple, affordable, and accessible and changing the world.

Todd Henry [00:04:59]:

So one of my favorite quotes, I'm going to get this wrong. The number is wrong. But it was a Thomas J. Watson quote, or at least it's attributed to him, where he said, I think there's a world market for maybe 14 computers or something. It was something crazy like that. And this was obviously way, way, way back, like you said, when there was one computer maybe on the planet or a few compute. And of course, now we look at that and we say, that's, that's ridiculous. But that's actually indicative of the mindset of a lot of successful organizations and leaders.

Todd Henry [00:05:28]:

Right?

Todd Henry [00:05:28]:

One of your, your great mentors, and you led the research team for Clayton Christensen, really one of the pioneers in thinking about this topic of innovation. And you worked right alongside him for so many years. He talked about the fact that sometimes we can fail as leaders to innovate because we're doing what we think we should do, which is listening to our best customers. How can sometimes giving people what they want cause us to miss an opportunity.

Todd Henry [00:05:58]:

To disrupt the market?

Scott Anthony [00:06:01]:

Absolutely. This is a really critical challenge. Of course. Clay Christensen's original doctoral research identifies the phenomena of disruptive innovation, and he summarizes it in his 1997 both the Innovator's Dilemma when new technologies cause, wait for it, great firms to fail. The essence of the innovator's dilemma is you do everything that feels right. You listen to your best customers, you innovate to meet their needs, you produce the best products and services in the marketplace, and you fail in the face of someone who changes the game. Again, let's make it real. Let's go back to the Apple iPhone.

Scott Anthony [00:06:34]:

It's introduced in 2007. One of the market leaders at the time is Research in Motion, later renamed BlackBerry 2008. Jim Bossily, its co CEO, goes on a Canadian chat show and he is smug to the point of being dismissive, saying, I don't look up too much or down too much. The great fun is doing what we do every day. Yes, we're very poorly diversified. Yes, we either go to the moon or we crash to earth, but we're going to the moon pretty well so far. The challenge that Balsali faced is when he went to talk to his best customers, chief information officers, chief technology officers, who were the ones who actually paid for devices at that day, or went and talked to the power users, like lawyers and bankers, that loved the BlackBerry keyboard. They gave him no signal that the world was about to change.

Scott Anthony [00:07:21]:

And this pattern is really persistent. Your best customers are inaccurate guides when the world flips around you. And we're seeing this in a range of different industries today, from higher education to consulting companies to defense companies, energy firms, and on and on and on.

Todd Henry [00:07:39]:

So another quote that I love that's often attributed to Henry Ford, but I don't know that there's any definitive proof that he actually said this, but if I'd asked the customers what they wanted, they would have. I would have given them a faster horse.

Todd Henry [00:07:50]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:07:51]:

It sort of epitomizes this mindset. And the Model T is an example of something else you talk about in the book, which is that disruption casts a shadow. And I think that we're right now in. In the sort of right at the beginning stages, starting to see the shadow of some of the disruption that AI is going to cause. What do you mean by disruption causes a shadow? And how should we be thinking about that? As. As leaders or as people who are very likely going to be caught in the shadow of some imminent disruptions?

Scott Anthony [00:08:24]:

First, I. I will say, from doing research on Henry Ford, I could find no validation that he actually said that. Of course, it gets attributed to him and it makes a lot of sense and it sounds like the sort of thing he would say, and maybe he did, I don't know. But I could not validate it either. To your specific question, Todd, the idea that disruption casts a shadow, in the long run, disruption drives explosive growth. It changes markets. It makes products and services more accessible, more affordable. This is not a good thing.

Scott Anthony [00:08:52]:

But there are losers. There are market leaders who sometimes struggle with disruption. There are consumers that can see downsides to disruption. Let me tell you about the Model T shadow. In the 1920s, there's a battle for the soul of the streets of major cities. Cities, of course, were not built for cars. They were built for people and horses. Henry Ford had achieved his vision.

Scott Anthony [00:09:14]:

He came up with the car for the great multitudes. The Model T was down to about US$5,000 in today's terms. Many people could afford it. The number of drivers was exploding. That's good for some but bad for others. There were, sadly, people who were getting injured and even killed because we had no rules, we had no regulations, we had no norms. There were no traffic signals. So the battle was between two camps.

Scott Anthony [00:09:41]:

On the one hand, the motorists said, it's the pedestrians fault. Let's brand them as jaywalkers. Jay is a country bumpkin. Walker goes across the street. Let's make them the enemy. The pedestrians fought back. They said, we're not the problem, it's the drivers. Let's brand them Fliver.

Scott Anthony [00:09:59]:

Boobs. Fliver was slang for a car at the time. Boob is a pretty universal term. The two sides waged their public relations campaigns and we know who won. In 1924, a traffic magistrate in New York said, we now know 80% of the problems are caused by the pedestrians. I think, like you said, we're seeing something very similar in AI today. You've got the boomers and the doomers. There are two sides that are emerging, two camps.

Scott Anthony [00:10:25]:

Who's right, who's wrong, who knows? But without guardrails, without rules, without regulations, more people are going to get hurt and there's going to be a lot of pain. It's clear sometime in the future, the line between before and after. But the middle of a disruptive Change is really messy, and the shadow can be something that really stalls progress if you're not careful about it.

Todd Henry [00:10:49]:

I think it's difficult because there is such a fever often right in the midst of this disruptive change. There's so much competition, there's so much pressure to deregulate. Not to regulate, but to deregulate, because we have to move fast. And part of that, I think, is this current disruptive environment is moving much, much faster than previous disruptions. You think about the adoption of the automobile or the television or some of these other. Or even the computer, the personal computer. The adoption took place over the course of decades at best, over the course of years. But now we're talking a matter of months.

Todd Henry [00:11:29]:

I mean, most people had not heard of generative AI as of probably a year ago. And now almost everyone who works in an office is using generative AI in some form or fashion. And their usage of it is only becoming more agentic. It's accelerating.

Todd Henry [00:11:44]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:11:44]:

The way that they're using it, they're offloading decisions to AI in some cases. So how, you know, in. In that environment, how should leaders be thinking about the embrace of the disruption and it's. And this potential shadow? So in other words, how should we be thinking and planning for the future when the future is coming at us so quickly? It's like we're driving 80 miles an hour down the highway and we see a brick wall coming straight at us. And we're still 200ft out, but. And we have to react, but we don't know which way to go.

Todd Henry [00:12:18]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:12:18]:

So how should we be thinking about this right now?

Scott Anthony [00:12:20]:

Well, let me make the challenge even harder. You're driving 80 miles an hour. There's a brick wall out there, but fog has descended around you. It's not clear what is the right direction to go, because exactly as you describe. Technologies are advancing exponentially. Lines between industries are blurring. Expectations of everybody is shifting. And add on top of that, shock after shock is coming at you.

Scott Anthony [00:12:43]:

The great gift that I got from Clayton Christensen is he gave me a set of lenses which that I could use to look at the world. I wear contact lenses, so they're like fused onto my eyeballs. New ways to go and look at things and see what I would otherwise see, catch things I would otherwise miss. My hope, with epic disruptions, is that history can do that as well. The stories, to a degree, are timelessness. They are things that are true. They exist outside of time. But there is a fierce urgency to the ideas in the book because of exactly what you've described, artificial intelligence is just one you could talk about autonomous vehicles, additive manufacturing, augmented and mixed reality.

Scott Anthony [00:13:22]:

And those are just the ones that begin with the letter A. Every industry is dealing with disruptive change to some degree, and if we don't understand it, it can really, really be hard for us.

Todd Henry [00:13:35]:

Can you give me an example of.

Todd Henry [00:13:36]:

One of those lenses that you feel like Dr. Christensen gave to you through which to look at the world?

Scott Anthony [00:13:42]:

You know, I think one of the principles that you see consistently when you see disruptive change is the idea that where disruption starts is not squarely in the mainstream of the market, but in often an unanticipated market. A great example of this is the transistor. A trio of researchers at Bell Labs come up with a transistor, a solid state device that ultimately replaces vacuum tubes and that power communications networks. But when a transistor is first created, it has serious limitations. It's got a lot of inconsistency in how it works. People don't know how to design systems around it. It can't be put in a mainstream market. So where does it find its first home? Inside hearing aids? A market that nobody predicted.

Scott Anthony [00:14:23]:

It was a great market for a somewhat limited product. Before that, you would have a pack on your waist that was powered by vacuum tubes that would get really hot. A transistor gave off no heat. It was a lot cheaper. It was a lot more rugged. A perfect market for a disruptive product that played the innovation game in a different way. So when we're trying to understand industries changing, we look not first at the mainstream of the market. You look at the edges, you look at the people who can't consume anything at all.

Scott Anthony [00:14:53]:

Yes, of course I want to understand how big companies are adopting AI, But I am paying even more attention to how people in emerging markets are using AI for education, health care, and all sorts of other applications, because their alternative in those contexts isn't going to a great hospital or great school. It's nothing at all. And when the alternative is nothing at all, you're thrilled with a product, no matter what the limitations are. So that's one example of something that I learned from studying disruptive innovation. Look at the edges.

Todd Henry [00:15:25]:

It really is fascinating how it's interesting to see how people are adopting the usage of AI to meet their own needs or just to follow their own curiosities. For example, I heard someone the other day saying, I'll go on walks, and I'm a big history buff, and I'll just go on walks. And they were saying, I'll just ask questions about certain events in World War II, and we'll just have a conversation. I'll have a conversation with ChatGPT about these events and why did they do that and what happened next and what was the strategy and what was reported and what did people know. And it really is interesting. I mean, you think about language learning, you think about all of these other types of ways that people have adopted these technologies were completely unintentional.

Todd Henry [00:16:05]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:16:06]:

I don't think that that wasn't the intent of it. And yet those around the margins, as you say, is kind of where a lot of the adoption is happening in unique ways that are. That are going to transform things like education.

Todd Henry [00:16:17]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:16:18]:

So you use this phrase I loved in the book.

Todd Henry [00:16:21]:

You said innovation is a collectively individualistic activity.

Todd Henry [00:16:25]:

I love the juxtaposition within that phrase is contained in that. Can you describe that to us? Why is that the case?

Scott Anthony [00:16:33]:

I think it's a really good question and something that surprised me a little bit when I went deep into history. Often we're taught about these great inventors throughout history that are identified by individual names. We talked about one of them, Henry Ford, who was a key figure in driving the Model T. You go back even earlier to the first story in the book that's got a protagonist. It's Johannes Gutenberg in the printing press. The story really begins in 1437 in Strasbourg, Germany. But it's not Gutenberg working on its own. It's Gutenberg working with a collection of people.

Scott Anthony [00:17:05]:

It's Conrad Sasbach who's got the printing press that he develops. It's Johann Fust who ends up giving the funding to Gutenberg and the team. It's Cardinal, a cardinal in the area who's one of the first customers of the printing press. And on and on and on. The myth we have is of the lone genius. But every single story of disruptive innovation has heroes, and that word is plural. There's no single person that drives disruption. There are dozens, in some cases hundreds, in many cases thousands of people.

Scott Anthony [00:17:37]:

Where there are handoffs that will stretch across years and across decades. That's really important because if you're a leader saying, I want more innovation inside my organization, it's not about finding that singular genius. It's about building a context and a culture where innovation can thrive. If you're an individual and you've got that spark of an idea, well, you better start thinking pretty soon about who you're going to work with to bring that spark to fruition because you're not going to be able to do it on your own. There's no way. Every story has heroes, and that's plural.

Todd Henry [00:18:08]:

How do we as leaders keep our ear to the ground inside of our organizations for those potentially disruptive ideas, those potentially disruptive technologies.

Todd Henry [00:18:18]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:18:18]:

That we could adopt within our organization? How do we create that culture where those kinds of ideas that are happening on the periphery can rise into the organizational consciousness?

Scott Anthony [00:18:30]:

I would say two things here, Todd. The first thing I would say is I love the advice from the great science fiction writer William Gibson, who once said, the future's already arrived. It's just not very evenly distributed. So the guidance I give leaders is find ways to regularly experience tomorrow, today. And the easiest way to do that if you have children, is to spend time with. I've got four kids. The oldest is 19. The youngest is eight.

Scott Anthony [00:18:53]:

They're always playing with new technologies, and I make a regular habit of playing along with them. Yes, it drives them a little bit crazy sometimes when dad sits down to play with the emerging technology, but it's a way that I get easy exposure to the things that are coming next. Inside organizations. That's spending time in emerging geographies, going to extremes, spending time with younger employees who are often pioneering, seeing the experiments going on at organizational edges and so on. The second piece of advice that I generally give people is to make it fun for people to do new things. We go to work to work, and that puts up hurdles and barriers to doing new things because we feel pressured to perform. What we want to do is have a context where people can just screw around, because it is the screwing around and the playing that ultimately teach us some of the unanticipated things you were saying. I love the example you gave of AI being used in ways that people didn't expect.

Scott Anthony [00:19:48]:

And the reason why that's happening is because people are just playing with the technology. We do that individually. We don't do that at work. And that really is to the detriment of change. Inside organizations. There's a lot of fear in technology. Inside organizations. You replace the fear with fun.

Scott Anthony [00:20:06]:

It makes it a lot easier to spot and nurture those sparks, those green shoots that can turn into tomorrow's great growth businesses.

Todd Henry [00:20:19]:

Scott Anthony's new book is called Epic Disruptions, and it's available now everywhere books are sold. And if you'd like to hear our full conversation, which is fascinating, you can find it@dailycreativeplus.com Just enter your name and email address. We'll send you a private feed where you can listen to the full interviews from every episode. Thanks so much for listening.

Todd Henry [00:20:41]:

My name is Todd Henry.

Todd Henry [00:20:42]:

You can find my books, my work, my speaking events, everything else that you might want to find@todhenry.com until next time. May you be brave, focused, and brilliant. We'll see you then.

Todd Henry [00:21:06]:

Sam.