How can you leverage technology to disrupt your industry?

Use the "Time Travel Brainstorm" technique. Imagine your industry 20 years in the future. What technologies exist? How have consumer needs evolved? Now, as a team, 'time travel' back to the present and brainstorm ways to start integrating these futuristic concepts today. This exercise stretches your imagination, breaks the constraints of current technology, and encourages proactive, forward-thinking innovation. By envisioning a radically advanced future, you can identify potential areas for technological disruption in your current industry landscape.

Leverage Marshal McLuhan's Tetrad Examine the technology through four dimensions: 1. What human body part does it enhance? 2. What does it make obsolete? 3. What does it retrieve that was previously obsolesced? 4. What does it flip into when pushed to extremes? Apply this framework to any technology and see how the results apply to your industry. By systematically analyzing a technology through these four aspects, you can uncover innovative ways to apply it, foresee its impacts, and potentially steer your industry toward a new paradigm for effective strategic disruption.

In my opinion the above approach is a very classical way of looking at the problem that I would rephrase at to “building a innovation continuum” in you organization. I would advise to flip the script. Instead of looking for the next disruption, I would look for “what will stay the same no matter the disruption in the industry”. We are terrible at predicting the future, but some thing stay the same because they are close to our human nature. This will allow you to stay focused in the waves of technology that are hitting the shores of your industry and business. Understanding what will stay the same is also going to give you a clear path forward in where the next disruption may hit. I hope that helps a little bit. Flip the script 😊

To disrupt, don't just focus on the content technology delivers; consider how the technology itself alters interactions and expectations within your industry. Recognize that each technology not only carries content but also shapes the way this content is perceived and used. Introduce technologies that change the scale, pace, or pattern of work. Like introducing TV changed storytelling, your chosen technology should redefine the industry's landscape. This could mean creating a new way to engage with customers, altering the speed of service, or changing information flows. By focusing on the character of the technology itself, you can fundamentally change the 'language' of your industry, leading to profound and lasting disruption.

-Determine the most complex,arduous, mundane aspects of your industry -Identify areas where there is most concentration of costs, blockers of viable business cases for a scalable business solutions for your customers/consumers -Apply technology at the intersection of the above two.