Fighting tech innovations won’t save outdated business models

The top layer of earth is an interesting place. Also known as the ‘crust,’ this thin, solid layer is much more than meets the eye.

If the earth were a mango, the skin of that mango could represent the crust in terms of thickness and location. But unlike a mango skin, earth’s crust isn’t one large piece covering the entire planet.

Instead, it’s broken up into many different pieces called tectonic plates that fit together like a large puzzle.

Also unlike the mango, underneath the solid crust is not a deliciously crispy interior. Instead, directly below the crust, we have a thick liquid layer called the mantle. Because it is liquid, the mantle flows and moves around, which moves the plates sitting on top like pieces of ice on a pond.

When the plates get moved around, they wreak havoc because they crash into, and pull apart from, and rub against each other. And as you can imagine, these interactions can do some pretty serious damage. On the earth, these tectonic events result in dangerous natural disasters around the world such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis.

The world of business also has tectonic events.

Last week, I took a ride via Uber and I got a really good and convenient service. I clicked on the app from where I was and then clicked on my destination. It gave me an estimate of the fare I would pay. For me it was a 45 per cent discount from what I am usually charged by the usual cab drivers!

Secondly, the cab was owned by a Kenyan and driven by a Kenyan. I was sold!

As that was happening, the traditional Kenya street taxis had resorted to bullying Uber drivers hoping to push them out of the city, arguing that they are taking away their business. The taxi drivers had even formed social media groups and had held meetings to scheme ways of driving Uber out of Nairobi.

The street taxi drivers were complaining about Uber’s cheap pricing model that is pre-determined by kilometre coverage and time spent.

Now, what was happening in Nairobi is just a tip of the iceberg.

From healthcare to manufacturing and every other industry in between, there are countless examples today of innovation that is disrupting or has disrupted what otherwise appear to be totally stable, perfectly acceptable products, processes and even sectors.

Fuelled by easy access to enabling technology, the disruption economy has arrived and it’s here to stay.

The taxi sector didn’t see it coming. Yellow cabs were everywhere. They were the global symbol of urban life and transit. It was an industry that just worked. And then Uber happened.

Mr Ashford Mwangi, the spokesperson for United Kenya Taxi Organisation, says that the organisation was not consulted before Uber was allowed into the Kenyan market. “We have loans to service, families to feed, children to educate and other responsibilities and we are not ready to abandon the industry to a foreigner,” he said.

What Mr Mwangi has failed to see is the beauty of the disruption economy. It enables two opportunities.

First, it allows companies to redefine how and why they work. Such an organisational awakening then leads into the second opportunity for companies to adopt: a better way to serve its external customers and its internal customers who are the employees who choose to work there because they believe in the company’s purpose.

The digital disruption of today compels new thinking and behaviours that “end” one trend while ironically giving rise to new awakening that previously didn’t exist.

In other words, with disruption comes the opportunity for eruption — the closing of one door and the innovative opening of another; the opportunity to create and proliferate, as well as wither and die.

Every industry has to identify their disruption risks and ask tough questions, including the most important one of all — are we going to be the disrupted, or the disruptors?

Uber was born on a snowy night in Paris in 2008, when Kalanick and his friend Garrett Camp could not get a cab. The two vowed then and there to solve the problem with a revolutionary new app. The premise was dead simple — push a button and get a car. What will you disrupt today?

Mr Waswa is a management and HR specialist and managing director of Outdoors Africa. E-mail: [email protected]