If you’re reading this post I’m guessing you’ve already been through some kind of disruption in your business – or — you’re a forward-thinking CEO who realizes you need to plan for the inevitable. Disruptive innovation keynote speakers can help you navigate through those choppy waters.

Disruptive innovation keynote speakers

You know that disruption is coming, and you also know that you’re going to have to innovate and change the way you do business in order to survive it.

As a motivational speaker on the topic of disruptive innovation, I’ve been in front of many audiences who don’t believe that they need to innovate and change. They’re hanging on to the hope that since their company or industry has run successfully for some extended period, that somehow they are immune — and their inclination is to leave things as they are.

(If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it — right?)

Futurist warning

As a futurist, I try to loudly sound the warning: disruption is coming. It’s inevitable – and you’d better be prepared for it. It’s been happening since the first business owner hung out their shingle. No industry is safe from it – but when an industry enjoys a long period without disruption, it can be lulled into complacency.

Legacy industries

Legacy industries like the newspaper industry enjoyed hundreds of years without being challenged, and so many publications stopped evolving. They thought their great longevity and dominance were somehow protection against change — until technology threw a monkey wrench into their business model.

Now, many major newspapers have shrunk to where they look like advertising circulars from the local grocery store.

Ag innovation

Farming remained basically unchanged in Europe and its colonies for over a thousand years … until the late 1700s and the Agricultural Revolution. Since then, it’s been steady but manageable change – but drastic, disruptive change is coming.

Imagine drones and robotics powered by AI to monitor and harvest crops, driverless tractors and machinery, aquaponics (fish farming to fertilize hydroponically grown foods), vertical farming in warehouses with automated watering and lighting (made possible by drastic reductions in electricity costs via LED lighting) … and more.

You can’t avoid disruption

Like I said before – no industry can avoid disruption. It is going to happen whether you like it or not.

When you think you have all of the answers, something else will hit you. That’s why it’s crucial to plan ahead, and ready your disruption survival plan now … before change catches you unprepared. You can do this with the help of a disruptive innovation keynote speaker.

Innovation speakers on disruption

I’m not a professor who gets paid to do research on a topic, and I’m not just a spectator who watches others innovate so they can speak about it. I’m a NASDAQ award-winning inventor and innovator who’s rarely had any “real” jobs in my life. I haven’t spent much time in a cubicle, and even less in an ivory tower or a dorm room. In fact, I never went to college; instead, I left home at 19 with $100 in my pocket and a drive to create. I’ve been problem-solving and figuring things out ever since.

If you’re looking for charts, graphs, and academic wisdom — hire a professor. If you want a disruptive innovation keynote speaker, hire someone who has been through it. If you’re looking for real life trial and error, huge learning curve, entrepreneurial, street-wise wisdom from someone who has lived it… hire a disruptive innovation keynote speaker who has been there.

Create your own disruption

Disruption happens when you least expect it. You’re going along just fine and suddenly someone enters your space with a new innovation that upends the industry and challenges your status quo. The lightbulb is an example of an early disruptive innovation. Prior to electric light people would light their homes with candles and grease lamps. Can you imagine hearing that you could light your home with something that you couldn’t carry around? This is true disruption because it changed the very way we live.

Netflix

Netflix is an example of a modern disruptive innovation that changed the way we live. I fondly remember being able to walk into a Blockbuster Video or Hollywood Video store and browse the titles of movies to rent. You could search through the box covers and read the descriptions. (BTW, that was part of my job as a film distributor. We would buy the rights to a movie and I would redo the box cover art.)

The first way they disrupted the industry was by getting rid of the late fees everyone hated so much. You would order the movie and watch it on your own time and send it back when you wanted. You just couldn’t rent another one until you returned that movie. The late fee thing was a big deal. But it still wasn’t enough to put Blockbuster out of business. The early adopters latched on to the video mail-in system. I remember I still did both as I actually liked going to the video store. But didn’t like the late fees!

Blockbuster eventually caught up to disruptive innovation, but by then it was too late. Netflix already had customers paying for online streaming subscriptions and Blockbuster eventually went out of business. Netflix disrupted itself when they started doing online subscriptions. Sometimes you have to change what you’re doing as far as innovation goes. Netflix disrupted themselves.

Disruptive innovation on your wrist

I would say that my own invention, the wrist water bottle, was definitely disruptive. Nobody had ever put a water bottle on the wrist before. It was a different way of drinking water. And it was very hard to get people to understand something that was so unique and different. I had to get the early adopters to start the trend. Most people will follow others, but don’t want to be the first to adopt something that is totally disruptive and different.

Cell phones

It’s hard to imagine but the cell phone was once a new concept and the first ones looked like big bricks. They weighed 2 pounds and cost the equivalent of $10,000 in today’s numbers. The smart phone then disrupted the cell phone. Social media, GPS and Internet access made the product a disruptive one. And one that we now can’t imagine living without.

Disruptive innovation keynote speakers are able to help you spot change ahead of time and steer your organization in the right direction.