{"id":1773,"date":"2017-01-18T20:06:07","date_gmt":"2017-01-18T20:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/?p=1773"},"modified":"2022-05-25T17:54:35","modified_gmt":"2022-05-25T17:54:35","slug":"two-digital-revolutions-disruption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/two-digital-revolutions-disruption\/","title":{"rendered":"Revolutions Always Come In Twos"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every industry that runs headlong into the digital age will go through two separate and very distinct revolutions. It\u2019s easy to confuse the two, or\u2014more likely\u2014to be unaware that a second revolution is in the offing. It’s also tempting to label the first revolution “disruptive” when real disruption usually rides in on the second wave.<\/span><\/p>\n

Revolution 1: Digitized<\/span><\/h2>\n

In the first revolution, your industry becomes digitized<\/i>. The tools of the trade shift from the World Of Atoms to the World Of Bits. Typewriters, printing presses, magnetic tape, cameras with claws and physical shutters: everything migrates to circuitry. Mechanical engineers give way to electrical engineers.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is tempting to conflate this this first wave of digital transformation with “disruption.” At this point, that term is typically invoked by the very people who already work in the industry. And small wonder: their workaday lives have, in fact, been disrupted. They are forced to re-orient. They must learn new skills, or at very least memorize some new acronyms. The transition can be painful and last years. Many will find their skill sets obsoleted and their careers in jeopardy.<\/p>\n

But while individual workers\u2019 routines have been \u201cdisrupted\u201d at this stage, the industry at large has not. The old power structures remain intact; the same BigCos dominate.<\/p>\n

In fact, it turns out that those incumbent firms are often the primary beneficiaries<\/em> of the first digital revolution. Brand new technology is expensive to purchase, deploy, and support. This lends deep-pocked incumbents a strong, if short-lived, advantage.<\/p>\n

Revolution 2: Distributed<\/span><\/h2>\n

In the second revolution, your industry becomes distributed<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now you are joining the networked world. Human beings, organizations, apps and other snippets of code: every individual node can now see every other node in the system, and interact with little or no friction. Network effects kick in. Electrical engineers give way to software engineers.<\/p>\n

At this stage, we already take for granted that all activity is being executed through digital tools and platforms. In fact, a whole generation of \u201cdigital natives\u201d may have come of age between the first and second revolutions.<\/p>\n

This is capital-D Disruption.<\/strong> The first revolution merely let OldCos do \u201cthe same thing, only better.\u201d But an industry that has morphed into a massively distributed system will give rise to entirely new products, new production modes, and new business models. The prime example here is today’s software industry:<\/p>\n