Daily Inspiration: “If you aren’t worried about your competition, check your assumptions. If you aren’t yet terrified about those that don’t yet exist, check your pulse!”

“If you aren’t worried about your competition, check your assumptions. If you aren’t terrified about those that don’t yet exist, check your pulse!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

Check the slide I’m using on stage – this has become the most popular one in my slide deck by far. I can see everyone taking photos, writing it down, thinking it through.

Simply put, it reads: “Companies that do not yet exist, will build products not yet invented, based on ideas not yet conceived, with manufacturing methodologies not yet in existence. Are you ready for the new world of disruption?”

And so while you should always be thinking about your current competitors and what they might be doing to cause you strategy havoc, it’s those that don’t yet exist that might cause you the greatest grief going forward.

Complacency is not an option.

Most grocery and retail stores dismissed e-commerce back in the 90’s, and gave up on it after the dot.com collapse. Boom – along comes Amazon!

British Airways and Air France charged crazy fees based on outdated pricing models that locked customers into their view of a monopoly based future. Along comes RyanAir.

Taxi companies failed to invest in the technology that customers were using in the back seat of their cars. Along comes Uber.

Right now, at this very moment, someone is out there ready to disrupt and destroy your business model.

What will you do as it unfolds? Are you ready for it? Thinking about it? Planning for it?

Are you trying to stay one step ahead by thinking about the very things they are thinking about?

If you aren’t doing that, you’re missing the point about the new rules of business in the era of acceleration and disruption.