Jeffrey I. Cole says leaders should prepare for disruption even when business is booming, auditing weaknesses rather than tracking rivals. He distinguishes innovation, which improves existing products, from disruption, which transforms a marketplace.
Cole cites 1999 as the music industry's best year ever and Netflix's Reed Hastings pursuing streaming while its DVD-by-mail business was successful. Best Buy survived Amazon's showrooming challenge by matching prices, emphasizing immediate availability, reorganizing stores into branded sections and getting manufacturers to help absorb costs; Circuit City disappeared.
Cole says small teams may experiment more freely because they have fewer established investments to protect, and urges companies to study failed experiments rather than hide them. On AI, he says concerns about jobs, education and security deserve serious attention, while an almost exclusive focus on risk can obscure its potential; he argues society should debate its role while the technology is taking shape.
