Disruptive Technology:Friend or Foe?

Robert McKennaGriffith College

Disruption

• Big bang disruption• Complete change in the rules of business• Innovation the only solution• Change is no longer gradual but is now

incredibly fast• Disruptive innovation - Christensen

Change?

• HemingwayHow did you go bankrupt?' Bill asked.'Two ways,' Mike said. ‘Gradually and then suddenly.‘

William Gibson

• The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.• This perpetual toggling between nothing being new, under

the sun, and everything having very recently changed, absolutely, is perhaps the central driving tension of my work.

Change: a case study in Facebook

• From new kid to old hat• Not new – everyone had a social network!• Yet suddenly became extremely profitable

Social network was never spatially constrained

What was the “killer app”

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Just ask.

Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?

Zuck: People just submitted it.

Zuck: I don't know why.

Zuck: They "trust me"

Zuck: Dumb [redacted by me]

Unicorns

Unicorn Companies

• U.S.-based software companies started since 2003 and valued at over $1 billion by public or private market investors (Aileen Lee)• Exponential organisations• “f you want to be a Unicorn, scale your org structure outside the core

team and find a way to drop your marginal cost of supply.”(Salim Ismail and Yuri van Geest)

• Uber Google Facebook etc.

Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield

• It’s pretty straightforward. I’ve been in this industry for 20 years. This is the best time to raise money ever. It might be the best time for any kind of business in any industry to raise money for all of history, like since the time of the ancient Egyptians. It’s certainly the best time for late-stage start-ups to raise money from venture capitalists since this dynamic has been around.

Are valuations arbitrary?

It’s very highly influenced by other factors: Interest rates being low, there’s a lot of money in V.C., funds get larger as a result, but the number of deals that they do remains about the same. So therefore the amount that they invest per deal goes up, which means the valuation goes up.

Long tail

Blind men and elephant parable

Long tail on the unicorn in the room

Disruptive Capital: Friend or Foe?

Sources

• Mark Zuckerberg at the 37th G8 Summit in Deauville 018 v1" by Guillaume Paumier - Own work. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mark_Zuckerberg_at_the_37th_G8_Summit_in_Deauville_018_v1.jpg#/media/File:Mark_Zuckerberg_at_the_37th_G8_Summit_in_Deauville_018_v1.jpg

• Downes, Larry, and Paul Nunes. Big Bang Disruption: Strategy in the Age of Devastating Innovation. Penguin, 2014.• Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises: The Hemingway Library Edition. Simon and Schuster, 2014.• "ErnestHemingway" by Lloyd Arnold - http://www.phoodie.info/2013/07/19/from-the-desk-of-ernest-hemingway-this-weekend-cuba-

libre-celebrates-my-birthday/. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ErnestHemingway.jpg#/media/File:ErnestHemingway.jpg

• Lee, Aileen. Welcome to the unicorn club: learning from billion dollar startups. Techcrunch 11/02/2013 [http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/02/welcome-to-the-unicorn-club/]

• https://medium.com/backchannel/here-are-the-secrets-of-unicorn-companies-c8951b99215b• "Nowitna river" by Oliver Kurmis. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 de via Wikimedia Commons – • http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nowitna_river.jpg#/media/File:Nowitna_river.jpg• "William Gibson 60th birthday portrait" by Gonzo Bonzo - originally posted to Flickr as William Gibson. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via

Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Gibson_60th_birthday_portrait.jpg#/media/File:William_Gibson_60th_birthday_portrait.jpg

• http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5#ixzz3cks2Z663

• ""The Science in Science Fiction" on Talk of the Nation, NPR (30 November 1999, Timhttp://www.longtail.com/about.html

• http://blog.longreads.com/tag/stewart-butterfield/• http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/is-slack-really-worth-2-8-billion-a-conversation-with-stewart-butterfield/?

_r=1&module=ArrowsNav&contentCollection=Technology&action=keypress&region=FixedLeft&pgtype=Blogs• Anderson, Chris (2006). The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More. New York, NY: Hyperion.

ISBN 1-4013-0237-8.code 11:55)• Gibson, William. Distrust that particular flavor. Penguin, 2012.• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant• Blind men and elephant3" by Illustrator unknown - From Charles Maurice Stebbins & Mary H. Coolidge, Golden

Treasury Readers: Primer, American Book Co. (New York), p. 89.. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blind_men_and_elephant3.jpg#/media/File:Blind_men_and_elephant3.jpg

• http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/is-slack-really-worth-2-8-billion-a-conversation-with-stewart-butterfield/?_r=1&module=ArrowsNav&contentCollection=Technology&action=keypress&region=FixedLeft&pgtype=Blogs

• http://art-josh.deviantart.com/art/Unicorn-Rainbow-379470948