One of my favorite things to watch is how industries get disrupted.
The thing that’s amazing is that in spite of all the information we have both in research and in practice the same story plays out over and over and over gain.
There are three that I am paying very close attention to.
- The disruption of college level and high school level education by on-line courses
- The disruption of the combustion engine with the electric car.
- The disruption of the legal profession through online legal services that address most common legal issues
What’s interesting about 1 and 3 is that the disruption took place as natural responses to market opportunities. There isn’t a single force of nature causing the disruption.
What is extraordinary about 2, the electric car, is that this a case where a visionary leader is actually creating the disruption through sheer force of will.
One of the key misunderstandings of the disruptee and their defenders is the assumption that technological and supply chain obstacles are insurmountable.
For example, how do you power your car when you go across the country?
What the disruptee’s don’t realize is that as the demand for electrical supply stations increase, because the supply of electrical cars increase, the supply of electrical supply stations will increase.
This takes time. Except when a visionary leader decides to make things go faster…
Which is what Elon Musk is doing again…
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=teslas-expanded-supercharger-networ-2013-05
The stations are only on the East Coast and in California today, but CEO Elon Musk announced this week that Tesla will triple the size of the supercharger network in the next month, according to AllThingsD. The network will span most of the metro areas in the U.S. and Canada by the end of 2013–meaning it will be possible to take a long-distance road trip in a Tesla without worrying about running out of power. Musk has said in the past that the company plans to install over 100 Supercharger stations by 2015.