2017: Disrupting Disruption - Buckle Your Seatbelt

Disruption: “to interrupt the normal course or unity of” – Merriam Webster Dictionary

When Steve Ballmer was going to join Bill Gates in the early stages of Microsoft, his mom apparently said, “That’s nice, Steve, but who would ever want to use a computer?”

I believe we can only innovate by looking at issues through a new lens, as you know if you have read my blogs and heard by interviews with top innovators on my acclaimed podcast Green Connections Radio or heard me speak at conferences. That’s how we make the world a better place.

Buckle your seatbelt. Today, we seem to be entering the Age of Disrupting Disruption.

Consider these disruptions that caused seismic shifts in America in 2016 and so far in 2017:

• Renewable energies now employ more people than coal does, courtesy of the historic energy revolution we’re in the midst of. Solar employs 260,000+ and wind employs about 100,000, whereas coal is down to ~60,000 and declining. How did this happen? New technologies quietly made natural gas and renewables more economical and plentiful, utilities are becoming more efficient and fuel-flexible, while state and federal regulations reduced pollution and established renewable energy standards, and private and public funding stepped in. (Energy master Peter Kelly-Detwiler discusses this on Green Connections Radio™.)
• The media business model is being upended by: (a) having to cover a president of the United States who caters to and reinforces a bite-sized attention span of oversimplified messages about highly complex and crucial issues, while using “alternative facts” that are complete fabrications and bashing the press’s credibility; (b) social media’s proliferation that serves that short attention span (while providing the option to supply in-depth coverage as well); (c) the public’s seeming preference to read, watch and listen to mostly if not only those who agree with them, even when the source may be factually and provably wrong and/or when the source has an agenda that is against the audience’s best interests; and (d) presumptions that quality information “should” be free and therefore they resist paying for it (even though they want “a fair wage” themselves).
• Donald Trump as candidate promised to “disrupt” the historic Paris Climate Accord by exiting it – agreed to and signed by 196 countries to reduce their carbon emissions by 2025. But now that position may be disrupted too. Even the oil companies agree that this Accord needs to be adhered to, including Exxon Mobil formerly run by the new Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who is himself among the Administration’s supporters of the Accord along with Ivanka Trump and Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who expanded wind power in Texas when he was governor. As Perry told the Bloomberg New Energy Finance conference recently, ““I’m not going to tell the president of the United States to walk away from the Paris accord,” said Perry at the BNEF Summit. “I will say that we need to renegotiate it.” Even the Congressman from fossil fuel-dominated North Dakota supports it as the lead in a letter with eight other Republican House Members, though they want it weakened.
• The historic image of “presidential demeanor” (and gender) was disrupted by the election of a president who makes overtly sexist and crude remarks, has zero political or military experience nor surrounds himself with many people who do, and who routinely quotes provably incorrect facts, including those about the economy, jobs and crime. And, yes, the first female candidate of a major political party, Hillary Clinton attracted nearly 3 million more votes than the winner via the Electoral College.
• Citizens are disrupting their own modus operandi and taking matters into their own hands. People who never marched or spoke up about national or political issues before are taking to the streets and Congressional Offices. These are scientists who joined the March(es) for Science across the U.S. and the globe, and local folks who, for example, brought 36 confetti-filled balloons and petitions to their members of Congress to protest the repeal of ObamaCare. Or, openly protesting the Trump administration’s deportation of innocent immigrants and/or ban of Muslims into the U.S, or videoing abusive behavior by police and airlines and posting it on social media.
• The sacred trust of American elections was violated by Russian hacking, WikiLeaks and, some might argue, with the flood of new campaign cash from corporations since the Supreme Court sided with Citizens United on the rights of corporations to donate unlimited funds to campaigns. What makes America great is its freedoms and opportunities, which are maintained by free and open elections and a free press.
• The movie “Hidden Figures” – about the true story of the three black women mathematicians/engineers/self-taught computer scientists – disrupted the image of NASA’s white male “brain trust” who landed us on the moon. Without these talented, unsung women heroes those historic initial NASA flights would not have been possible.
• How we travel and move about is being disrupted from cars to hotels, to public transportation, to the accessibility of space travel. “Ubering” is replacing “calling a cab”; AirBnB is encouraging us to stay with complete strangers in their home in a strange city – despite other concerns about meeting creepy people online; and SpaceX and VirginGallactic are showing us that each of us can do space travel, for a price. And then there’s self-driving cars. (Even electric vehicles now seem “normal.”)
• The art of conversation is being disrupted by the ubiquity of smart phones. Seeing people sitting across from a dining companion in a restaurant, yet remaining buried in their screens makes me wonder: Do they know how to converse anymore? What does reducing conversational skills mean for society – and if these people can be good co-workers, teachers, spouses or parents?
• The long-held belief that a nuclear arms race is to be avoided is being disrupted by North Korean President Kim’s increased missile tests and open threats by President Trump that “a major, major conflict with North Korea is possible.”
• The United Kingdom’s unexpected “Brexit” vote to leave the European Union disrupts the European and global economies. And now there’s a movement to stop Brexit, disrupting that process!
• The insurance industry is being disrupted by the increase in climate change-related natural disasters, the reinvention of healthcare, and soon will be further upended by having to figure out the myriad liability issues of these self-driving cars/trucks.
• Women are disrupting power structures by bringing down men previously perceived to be untouchable, , with provable claims of sexual harassment, including Bill O’Reilly and Roger Ailes of Fox News, and Bill Cosby, despite the men’s greater commercial power, influence and financial resources.
• Members of Congress are upending their own district’s and constituencies’ interests by supporting cuts to satellites that provide warnings of bad and/or dangerous weather and cuts to clean water and clean air enforcement. And also, by not allocating funding to repair to our national infrastructure that is quite literally falling apart beneath our feet and wheels. These investments would bring funds and jobs and repairs directly into their districts, which is job one. Kelly Carnes, CEO of TechVision21 and former Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Technology Policy, talked with me recently on Green Connections Radio about disrupting the conventional idea of infrastructure by enabling innovation.
• President Trump is disrupting his own promises made during the campaign as well, from leaving NAFTA to supporting NATO, from China’s role to repealing the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) and more.

And then there’s artificial intelligence and virtual reality, which are disrupting these disruptions and more, including medical theories about how the human body and treatments work.

Stretching our comfort zones and sense of what’s possible is how we grow, economically, as businesses and as individuals. What we need to watch out for though, is that we don’t throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater.

Nuclear war still annihilates all of us. We still need trustworthy, viable and free elections — and a free press of high-quality, probing journalists. We still need to have effective meaningful face-to-face conversations. We still need safe roads and bridges, and warnings to evacuate impending extreme weather or natural disasters. We still need clean air and water. These “make America great” and prosperous.

So, as we buckle our seatbelts for more disruptive disruption in nearly every aspect of our lives, we would be wise to pause and ask: What’s our bottom line? How will it make life better – and for whom? Which parts should we keep?