We all know that disruption is coming. Where it’s coming from and how to manage it is the million-dollar question. Most don’t realise that the disruption that could really hurt us is more than likely going to come from outside our industry. We don’t even see it coming. It seems obvious after the impact, yet we are blindsided.
Take the case of the car wash industry in Buenos Aires Argentina. It had suffered dramatically declining revenues almost overnight even though there were more cars on the road and Argentinians are proud of clean cars and time poor. Revenues halved for no seeming reason. What happened?
It took some digging to find out why this was happening and the result was unexpected: it was not water restrictions or anything in the industry you would expect. Instead it was the dramatic improvement in weather forecasting technology – people were not getting their cars washed if it was going to rain.
How are you informing yourself about the trends that could impact your business? What are you reading? Which conferences are you attending? Smart business owners are casting their information net very wide, including outside their industry. No industry is immune. Rethinking business is not an option any more.