2013: The inevitable rise of corporate media and Silicon Valley’s disruption of all media

This article was first published on 14 January 2013.

The following quote is taken directly from this article on ZD Net and I think it’s gold:

“When your industry is in the path of a disruptive technology huge numbers of businesses will not survive — no matter what they do. This is why disruptive technologies are called disruptive and not because it’s an edgy term.

Even if a company sees the train wreck well ahead on the track they are on,  it won’t save them. I’ve seen it time and again during my 25 years in Silicon Valley, they will slam into that train wreck. The vast majority won’t be able to down size, change tracks, or reform their business model in time. Disruptive technologies disrupt.”

There’s a profound truth here that is lost on way too many people. The annals of business history are littered with stories of companies that failed to understand it.

This is a subject I could talk and write about at length. I won’t do it now but you’ll see it emerge over time as a key theme of The Disruptive Fringe.

Apart from that, the article also gives a number of very interesting perspectives on where the media industry is headed more generally.  It doesn’t explicitly make the point, but it also challenge us to reframe the way we think about and define industries in an age of disruption.