Creative Destruction and Survival

Weare in the midst of massive change. Post-Modern life and our economy are in a state of accelerating change. There is no longer such a thing as a stable career or job security. Industries are eaten by software and devoured by robots. Waves of disruption put companies out of existence.

Think Kodak.

They dominated the film industry, creating and developing it. Then cameras dematerialized into smartphones, and film became obsolete. Overnight. All the jobs associated with that industry evaporated, as did the enterprise value.

The age of corporate paternalism, where we can rely on a company to employ us and take care of us for an entire career, is past. We must adapt or be marginalized and made irrelevant.

The flip side of this radically changing world and workplace is opportunity. There are no longer gatekeepers and barriers to entry in many traditional businesses and industries. And new industries are being invented and rapidly developed. Legacy experts no longer dominate fields. Access to markets is widespread. There has never been a more opportune time to dream big, be creative, and fashion lives well suited to our deep needs.

Farsighted individuals adopt entrepreneurial strategies and tactics to adapt and navigate an economic landscape that Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Automation, Machines, and Algorithms are rapidly transforming. Its survival of the fittest.

As Darwin put it: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one most adaptable to change.”

To thrive in this new world, we need to develop entrepreneurial thinking and skillsets. First, we need to orient ourselves in the new paradigm and thinking. Listen along with me, and you will understand the Strategies and skillsets you can deploy to harness new technologies and exploit opportunities.

Entrepreneurial Thinking

Entrepreneurial thinking is about taking ideas and making them into products or services that meet the needs and wants of customers. The incubation of ideas into concrete products and services is the initial task in a startup.

The key criterion of the product and service mix is that it meets some need or want of a group of potential customers. The aggregate pool of potential customers is referred to as the market. The function of a startup is the search for product/market fit.

A startup is not a mini version of an existing enterprise. A startup is a temporary organization in search of a repeatable, sustainable, scalable Business Model. The goal of a startup is to evolve itself out of existence and into a company. A startup is a caterpillar, and the resulting company is the butterfly.

Ex Nihilo

Ex nihilo is a Latin phrase meaning “out of nothing.” In classical philosophy, it often appears in conjunction with the concept of creation, as in creatio ex nihilo, meaning “creation out of nothing.”

That is what entrepreneurship and startups deal with: creating something out of nothing. We are looking to create something that fits a need, something of value, something new and unique. We do it for a profit so that the process is scalable, meaning it can grow. Entrepreneurs can plow the earnings from achieving a thriving product/market fit back into the company to grow, expand, and refine the offerings.

Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and the first outside investor in Facebook, wrote a book about entrepreneurship called Zero to One based on this premise of going from nothing to something; that the act of creation is singular and incredibly worthwhile.

Entrepreneurs help nudge innovation forward, accelerate the most disruptive technologies, or shape a simpler or better way to do something, all in the service of solving problems.

Dream big.

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Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

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