Disruption: connecting three seemingly unrelated stories

Stories of disruption and disintermediation litter the newspapers.

• One headline asks, what are schools for?
• Another tells us that shady ocean freighters consistently skirt the law.
• And yet one more tells us India may soon lead the world in the mass adoption of electric vehicles.

The threaded connection in the above stories reminds us that disruption is everywhere. Industrially agnostic, disruption brings down longstanding reliability, bringing new heroes alongside new ways to commit a crime and get away with it for a time. They remind us that future value is chased by people who want their grandchildren's grandchildren to flourish and those who steal the future away from generations to come. 

Covid closed schools on a global scale, while home-schooled students, or those already online, were scarcely touched. Young people without educational interruption will likely be at the front line for future scholarships and choice employment.

As if the usual logistics of shipping freight weren't bad enough, shipping data researchers uncovered "hundreds of cases" (New York Times, 4 September 2022, p.1) of ships transmitting false or even impossible locations to disguise their destination and what they truly carry. A new definition of circumnavigation? Tech-supported and rogue nations sponsored so that agreed-upon international law is made impotent and shady or criminal activity continues unpunished as these cargo ships and tankers are loaded or unloaded hundreds of miles from where they appear to be.

India's embrace of electric bicycles, three-wheeled scooters, and mopeds, at costs as much as 60x less than an electric sedan, truck, or SUV, is powering a leapfrog over other nations. Light-weightiness of these vehicles means:

• Easily swapped and charged battery packs.
• Recharging expenses significantly lower than fuel.
• Easier navigation on pitted roads, with simpler and less expensive repairs should the vehicle get damaged.
• Smaller infrastructure investment in building and improving roads because wear and tear are reduced.

This last one in this list echoes what took place across Africa when cell phones eclipsed any need to string telephone wire, still decades away from sinking the first poles into the landscape.

The firms we care about as Maestro-level leaders should expect us to scout for disruptions. We should expect to find them and then make sense of them so that value can be extracted. We who do so with virtuous intent need to win the race and raise needed capital to stave off the otherwise terrible damage done by those who leave war, famine, slavery, starvation, and environmental devastation in their wake as they pillage our earth.

Disruptions remind us we are in a true and terrible battle that virtuous people everywhere need to engage and win.

-mark l vincent

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