Introduction: Getting ready for disruption

Disruption is uncomfortable yet exciting, painful yet liberating, destabilising yet energising. It really depends on your point of view.

In 1992, the US ad agency TBWA successfully registered the brand name, ‘Disruption’. Since then, the word has caught on rapidly. Pick up any phone and flick over to your news app. Now, disruption is seen widely as describing the effect that the internet and new tech have had on all forms of activity. It applies to business, cities, government, NGOs and life in general. Basically, we could say, disruption is an interruption, causing a change in what used to be seen as normal.

It is our position in this book that disruption does not apply only to innovation. Clay Christensen, ...

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