Appetite for Disruption

I’m going to come clean: I’ve got an appetite for disruption.

And it seems to be growing.

Day by day I’m becoming ever more interested in the notion of disruption. Increasingly, I find myself looking for areas that are ripe for disruption, and within those areas, looking for the particular thing that could be the disrupting factor.

When I read news articles or blog posts or Tweets, I’m constantly evaluating the information along the lines of disruptive vs not disruptive.

It’s like I’m developing this tiny little disruption filter in my brain.

And on the other hand I’m less and less interested in plain old innovation. Even innovations that are ground breaking are less interesting to me these days, if they’re not disruptively ground breaking. If they don’t somehow challenge the status quo of their field while breaking ground.

I don’t know why this is. It’s just something that has grown in me over time.

Maybe it’s because, as I said in my last post, the web is not very disruptive anymore. Up until fairly recently, the web and disruption went hand in hand. If you were innovating on the web, chances were you were also disrupting something, even if you didn’t know you were. So in just thinking about the web, you were also thinking about disruption.

Now that’s no longer the case.

Increasingly, innovating on the web is like creating a better bumper for a Ford Explorer. And sure, Ford Explorers need better bumpers (they always do!), but that’s not what I got into the web for.

So I find that as the industry around me, my field of choice, becomes less and less of a game about changing the game, I become more and more attuned to the blips on the radar that are in fact game changing — or to the opportunities, as I see them, for changing games one way or another. Regardless of whether those opportunities are related to the web or not.

It’s kind of liberating in a way – I feel the disruptive impulse in me is being freed from only thinking in terms of the web. I’m taking the blinders off and looking at the whole field of play, not just one aspect of it.

Are you feeling this way also? Or is it just me?

Maybe this is a passing interest, a blip on my own radar, touched off by reading some article or other. Maybe I’ll go back to thinking in terms of innovation and web startups and cities and in another week or so.

Or maybe this is the new level of focus for me, the point of engagement with new ideas around me from now on.

What about you? Are you finding yourself these days with an increased appetite?

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