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We all know PCs displaced mainframes and the car displaced horsecarts. But what are the industries facing disruption today? Here's a suggested top-10 list, compiled with a lot of help from some industry and disruption experts.
- Newspapers: 40 years of declining circulation + lost revenue from Monster.com, Craigslist and Google local ads. A former publishing exec says the trend of lost advertising appears to be accelerating;
- Consumer packaged goods: This is stronger outside the U.S., where large local retailers are bleeding the power away from their suppliers, especially in U.K (Tesco Plc is the leader) and Canada (Loblaw Cos.) Store-brand packaged goods offer good-to-superior quality at lower prices and with very low cost to develop. Scott Anthony, a consultant at Innosight and co-author of Seeing What's Next, says the challenge for packaged goods companies is to create new products, like Swiffer and Crest WhiteStrips, that compete with non-consumption.
- Broadcasters: YouTube + Tivo + more time online are all bad for broadcasters. Top-ranked YouTube videos are scoring 13-26M downloads, which is greater than a top-rated TV audience. Pip Coburn says the erosion of advertising will be a big problem;
- Doctors: I never experienced great medical service and neither did Andy Kessler, author of a new book, The End of Medicine. His take: Apply Silicon Valley technology for diagnostics and scanning to the one part of the medical industry that doesn't scale, frontline MDs.(Podcast here;)
- Junk Food: As the population ages, with seniors to double to 25% of the U.S. population by 2030, better nutrition might just start to make sense. (Call me crazy) Organic purveyors Whole Foods is one of the most profitable and fastest growing grocers with sales of US$4.7B last year and gross margin 600 bps above the industry norm. Aren't they on to something that could be done in fast food, too?;
- Enterprise Software: $50k per CPU for an Oracle DB? Download something free here. Eager to pay $139-149 for MS Office upgrade 2007? Try one of these... or just do nothing;
- Real Estate Agents: After what travel agents got, it looks like real estate agents are next. (It's not personal... It's strictly business.) Get your property valuation, property tax report, market trend and comparable house data in about 30 seconds here;
- Mutual Funds: Want performance: Pay up for a hedge fund. Want better value: Switch to ETFs;
- Municipal Roads & Parking: Parking meters are only starting to change from the 1940s nickel-an-hour design. Add a satellite and you can meter the roads, parking and insurance. London's ₤8-congestion charge for driving in the city is just the start;
- Intellectual Property & Patents: Looks like a broken system to me. Inventors aren't being protected. Someone might solve this with a new business model. Maybe Nathan Myhrvold, maybe Ocean Tomo's approach to auctioning patents has merit. Lawyers will make it worse.
**Related Information **
Financial Post: Top 10 Industries Under Attack (pdf), a longer version of this list.
Full archive of On Disruption columns published in the Financial Post.
Archive of The Disruption Group in the news.
You have missed the area which will drive disruptive technologies: sustainability -- Check out what Pakit Inc (pakitinc.com) is beginning to do for food packaging and handling -- plastic is leaving the building... large fast food restaurants use a lot oh what will they do?
Posted by: Ted Weir | November 14, 2008 at 04:07 PM